> What is discouraged is using tables as invisible layout grids - and that was their primary de-facto usecase before CSS and grid layouts.

After too.

I've seen enough "Introduction to CSS"s filled with caveats and hemming & hawing to know that it's all to be avoided when+if possible. I know, I know, there's a whole wide wonderful world out there full of aligns and borders and containers and insets and margins and masks and offsets and paddings and positions oh my. Bleccch..