> Thirdly, that "XHTML is easy" assumes that everybody has
  > embraced HAML or Jade or other sugary templates. I
  > personally find they all suck horribly, so I use
  > Handlebars (a Mustache variant) and write the HTML
  > myself.

You don't have to use weird template languages; standard markup is fine, assuming your template library supports it. For example, my site's templates are written in XHTML 1.1, which is automatically converted to HTML4 for older browsers.