alt Hacker NewsPrograms adding entries to the hosts file is still pretty normal, e.g. if something that uses a local webserver as its UI and wants you to be able to access it by name even if you don't have an internet connection or may be stuck behind a DNS server that mangles entries in the public DNS that resolve to localhost.
Programs like that should just be shipped with good documentation. And applications built to be used by normies should almost certainly never be built that way in the first place.