Ditto! I had the most heated arguments with people who complained that tables "just worked". It didn't help that Photoshop was (is?) king and web slices split into table/tr/td backgrounds was the most common way to display fancier layouts.

I also think existing software played a large part in the proliferation of tables. E.G. WordPress/B2 and phpBB (as well as practically every other forum system) layouts at the time were all heavily dependent on tables. There was really no incentive other than "well, CSS is a better way!" Until you came up with your own examples, there was no convincing.

It was a slow and arduous process, but I hope we keep going forward and not backward into JS-only land.