I've learned HTML twenty years ago approximately and had learned and unlearned several ways and have seen silver bullets come and go. Actually it seems to me YOU haven't been around long enough to know what was the reason for the "do not use tables for layouts" and then see the mess caused by those that took it to the extremes.

If it is a table, it should be a <table>, if it ain't a table, it should not be a <table>!

I agree that the <ul> is fairly ... erm ... weird. It's in no way related to HTML tables though. <ul> is an unordered list. At the time PerlMonks were written it made sense. <ul> does create indentation even with no stylesheets and can be nested. Even if CSS were available at the time, the site needed to support browsers that did not support CSS.

That post is so full of ignorance that it can effectively be ignored.

(Hmm... I wonder if that's why it's called ignorance.)