Well, I am never working with tables, but I can fully understand people using them. The web standards were made to help people doing things easier, but the missing support of the browsers (yes, IE, I'm looking at you) made it more complicated and only the easiest but at the same time dirtiest variant was proven to work properly in all browsers with little effort.

But now, where all big browsers were proselytised to the right path, it should be a looooot easier to work with proper standards and hopefully we won't hear excuses for bad web design so often anymore.

PS: and of course good web design is not only some esoteric stuff some web designers worry about (of course it is, too, it's like going farting and burping to a good restaurant), but it's directly related to speed, usability and maintenance costs.