The real reason we don’t use tables for layout (and only for the occasional tabular data) is because a table layout doesn’t work really well on the screen of an iPhone or Android phone, especially when they are vertically aligned. So, the workaround is to use media selectors: Desktops, laptops, and tablets get a table layout; phones get a simpler one-column layout.
I believe grid and flex layouts allow one to use a single design which will appropriately scale from a phone screen to an ultrawide monitor, but I use a two-layout or three-layout design for my web pages.
[1] In the days when the CSS Zen Garden was new, all of the web design blogs and comments felt using <table> for anything at all was heresy, since abusing <table> resulted in really ugly and hard to maintain webpages during the dot-com days of the late 1990s. It would be an extended discussion whether it was OK to even use <table> for clearly tabular data.
I think the don't-use-tables argument is from way before mobile devices were something web developers cared about. I recall it as being mostly about semantics, i.e. tables should only be used for tabular data, not setting up the layout of your entire page.
Those kinds of discussions have dropped off of the Internet over the last decade and a half, being hosted at places like the now defunct original Digg website. It was an era when one could said something really stupid online and it would become mercifully forgotten.
What I have found is a 2014 blog posting where another web designer from that era says “the early anti-HTML table movement was strong. It managed to brainwash many generation of developers into thinking that any usage of table is evil.
[...] I am one of those developers who avoided table layout, even for displaying tabular data.”
These days you actually can use <table> without compromising accessibility, by adding aria-annotations. So if you prefer this to CSS, go ahead.
Most of the angst around <table> was before aria support, so using <table> purely for layout impacted accessibility, which meant it was not viable for most real-world scenarios.
That said, if you need stuff like colspans for a layout, you are probably better of using grid.
The real reason we don’t use tables for layout (and only for the occasional tabular data) is because a table layout doesn’t work really well on the screen of an iPhone or Android phone, especially when they are vertically aligned. So, the workaround is to use media selectors: Desktops, laptops, and tablets get a table layout; phones get a simpler one-column layout.
I believe grid and flex layouts allow one to use a single design which will appropriately scale from a phone screen to an ultrawide monitor, but I use a two-layout or three-layout design for my web pages.
[1] In the days when the CSS Zen Garden was new, all of the web design blogs and comments felt using <table> for anything at all was heresy, since abusing <table> resulted in really ugly and hard to maintain webpages during the dot-com days of the late 1990s. It would be an extended discussion whether it was OK to even use <table> for clearly tabular data.