Is it a bad practice or has a negative effect to use a comment tag as the end of a div, not using a ">" to close it?
<div class="container">
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
</div <!--container-->
I find it more readable this way, rather than closing a div and opening a comment on the same line.
Based on what the spec says an HTML5-compliant parser should do (W3C HTML5.2§8.2.4.7, WHATWG HTML§13.2.5.7), this should behave identically to a proper end tag.
But it's a syntax error. And syntax errors are called errors for a reason. Whether you think it's bad practice to do this depends entirely on whether you think it's bad practice to rely on syntax errors with known, fixed behaviors, or writing syntax errors is bad practice in the first place.