[ath92]

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.

[nescioquid]

That's right. The argument was separating document structure from layout. Using a table for page layout makes the document structure incoherent.