I do wonder if it's Java as well, I've never been exposed to that ecosystem but it seems many bad (IMO at least) practices seem to originate from Java.

Another one I despise is the page object pattern for E2E tests. Basically introducing a pseudo-DSL tied to something that is ever changing. I like the Cypress approach of using app actions instead:

https://www.cypress.io/blog/2019/01/03/stop-using-page-objec...

I utilize this in my playwright tests since I found it very useful when writing cypress tests previously.