The "we tried, it failed" story would be a lot more interesting in its bland boring shitty conservative dismissal rejection if the browsers had ever tried to support it. XSLT shipped 1.0 in 1999 and the browsers afaik never once ever did any further work, never bothered on the 2.0 (2007, incredibly better), 3.0 (2017), or new 4.0 (upcoming). Devs had to deal with the pretty jank early version, which changed a lot for 2.0! Massively! For massive betterment.
It's so so cheap and easy to discard and downput. I recommend to those desiring the path of the engineer the builder to be more sensitive. To tune in to what is good, what aspects did work. Look for value. The people in this world need those instincts, to look and assess and collect. The story of why things maybe don't work is the contrapositive failure, the same post hoc ergo propter hoc, but for the failure case. It's wrong, or at least, it usually misses the realer stories. It's a bad analysis filter.
This refusal to ever see the maybe, better, possibly rejects your ability to see and tune for more. Progress on, stop rejecting. Get good. Find good. Look for the good. Bring out the good. Or if not, consider the perhaps. If nothing else, more neutrally: let not you tie your wagon every time to the current of what is! (Another world is possible.)