Hmm. Your phrasing strikes a chord in me somewhere. The answer is a resounding yes. As the old adage goes, "anything worth doing is worth doing well". But what makes HTML "lowly"? Is it that it's not a programming pursuit?

I believe that the fundamentals of good programming practice (simplicity, clarity, generality as the tpop mantra goes) have more to do with the programmer than the language they are programming in. If it's these "best practices" that you were referring to in your OP, then again, certainly they should carry over to other areas of your life (even non-programming ones). For instance, many programmers have highly organized minds that can cut right through the chaff to the heart of a problem. This ability has more to do with their general problem solving skills than with how they chose to implement a solution. (though how to implement a solution might be an interesting sub-problem)