Lessons learned:
While this is a useful example, I feel the need to stress the warning of the original example:
Note: Use the HTML
<a>element to create links whenever possible. Browsers provide valuable functionality for native HTML links, e.g., open the target in a new window and copy the target URL to the system clipboard.The way I read this, there is almost no reason ever to use this specific pattern. The native anchor element already has so many features built into it that the cons outweigh any pros of this pattern. The only case I can think of for this reasoning is to specifically prevent those features/behaviors.