[bouncingsoul]

I'd guess it's simply that PG codes html the way he learned years ago.

Not snark – you have to justify throwing out your table + spacer.gif knowledge to learn how to do things with div + css. Maybe he doesn't see a huge benefit.

Also (http://www.paulgraham.com/arc0.html):

Arc embodies a similarly unPC attitude to HTML. The predefined libraries just do everything with tables. Why? Because Arc is tuned for exploratory programming, and the W3C-approved way of doing things represents the opposite spirit.

...

Tables are the lists of html. The W3C doesn't like you to use tables to do more than display tabular data because then it's unclear what a table cell means. But this sort of ambiguity is not always an error. It might be an accurate reflection of the programmer's state of mind. In exploratory programming, the programmer is by definition unsure what the program represents.

[jkkramer]

If your exploratory programming involves JavaScript/Ajax, tables can be a pain in the butt to deal with. Semantic HTML makes manipulating the DOM much simpler -- no need to dodge around meaningless markup junk.

[noodle]

i don't think there's anything inherently "wrong" with using tables. there's just a better way to do it. if you don't want to do it the better way, thats cool. it might negatively impact you (higher bandwidth costs, slower load time, etc.), but it probably won't.