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Your Worst IT Workshop?
suntory writes "I am a lecturer at a Spanish university. This week had to attend a workshop on 'Advanced HTML and CSS' for the university staff. Some of the ideas that the presenter (a fellow lecturer) shared with us: IE is the only browser that follows standards; frames and tables are the best way to organize your website; you can view the source for most CSS, Javascript and HTML files, so you can freely copy and paste what you feel like — the Internet is free you know; same applies for images, if you can see them in Google Images Search, then you can use them for your projects. Of course, the workshop turned out to be a complete disaster and a waste of time. So I was wondering what other similar experiences you have had, and what was your worst IT workshop?"
I submitted this post in 1997 when I used the slashdot id suntory. I can't believe the admins are THIS slow. It still was a bad conference then.
I took the How to be the Web's Best Editor workshop offered by Slashdot. What a disaster.
I submitted an article on it a few months ago. They posted it to the front page 3 or 4 times. Just search for keywords: bestt editer
Then once I got there it was a week of "If you encrypt your traffic," (thusly losing the ability to QoS that traffic), "you only need to firewall your management boxes and vlan off all of your VoIP endpoints!" Cue the rest of the class firewalling off their management boxes from everyone else (including themselves) *sigh*
If you can, could you provide the name of the vendor who gave that course? I would like to avoid them at all costs :)
with another member of the IT staff from the college I worked at, back in the early PC days. Think it was the fall of 89. It was a half day thing on a Saturday for PC maintenance. In those days power supply to the motherboard was tricky, my co-host found out the hard way when she hooked one up backwards and it kinda went boom when she powered it up.
;)
That was not quite as spectacular as the time a prof at the college hooked up two PC's via serial cables, one of them being on an AV cart (and plugged into it) - seems the cart was wired wrong, when he fired those up there was an small explosion, a fair bit of smoke and some actual pieces of the serial card from one of the pc's strewn about the case.
Ah, the good old days - I worked on Tandy machines that had fully exposed power supplies, took one apart once (the PC not the power supply!) and wondered what the whirring sound was, thing was still running
Oh that I could go back to the day of swapping floppy disks to run stuff.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Since the difference between intelligence and stupidity is that there's a limit on intelligence, let's try naming the *best* conferences we've been to.
I've been to OOPSLA a couple of times. Very enjoyable and informative. More recently, I just attended a "No Fluff, Just Stuff" conferences in Atlanta. Lots of good information, especially on Groovy and Grails.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
It was an AskSlashdot session which was full of the worst possible examples.
**Whoosh**! The woman instantly tears into the instructor's hard drive like in one of those hacker movies and starts moving and deleting files! The instructor dived for her own laptop and yanked the Ethernet cable. I'm still not all sure what really happened there.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
However I DID have an IT guy tell me with a straight face that windows out of the box is more secure than any given Linux install out of the box. He backed down pretty quick when I suggested that we install both OSes on a machine connected to the open Internet, though...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While HTML and CSS are important to know still, I can't help but wonder how many people actually still build websites with HTML and CSS and Java and such? I stopped using plain HTML at least four years ago, when I discovered Content Management Systems (WebGUI back then, now using Joomla). I've built or helped build dozens of sites, all part time, using CMS, and most of my clients couldn't be happier. They have access to add content all day long, and don't have to worry about "design".
If I went to a Web seminar like the one described in the story, and it didn't mention building sites on top of a CMS, I'd question the presenter and the company that paid for me to go. There is no reason that your average person needs to know HTML or CSS, as those should be handed over to DESIGNERS, people skilled with making things look good. If you want to see what it looks like when everyday people do design just go over to MySpace (akkkk).
Just my $.02 (actual value subject to market forces)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
While not exactly a workshop per se, it was the biggest waste of time. My employer basically paid for me to have people try to sell me stuff. Aren't the sales people supposed to be paying me for my time in the form of free lunches, dinners, blow and strippers?
I did attend a USENIX tutorial that was bad. Well maybe not bad in the grand scheme of things, and I liked the presenter, it sucks to have to slam him for this... however...
It was, if I rememeber right, "Advanced perl CGI scripting", or the moral equivalent thereof. The point was... CGI, PERL, and Advanced.
It began with a 3 minute speech about how thats what the tutorial used to be, but people kept signing up who barely, if at all, understood perl, and didn't know jack about CGI... so the tutorial had been severely dumbed down.
After the morning session it became clear that I was going to learn nothing, and so I took the afternoon to find some better way to waste my time, since my employer wasn't getting any value out of sending me to that tutorial in any case, may as well get some value out of the time.
Again, was too bad, it looked like it could have been cool, and the presenter certainly knew his stuff and could have given a better course. Its just well... lets just say, it looked like I was among the minority who left.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
back in the Tivoli days I got sent to a 2-day class on how to use it. It was about totally worthless.
I found out the next week that the class had cost $750, and I actually went into the CEO's office and suggested to him that next time they want me to know something, they pay me the $750 and I'd purchase and read the appropriate book. He wasn't especially amused.
My
I've GIVEN some great, and somewhat bad talks in my day - every good speaker will tell you the same thing.
Most of the bad talks were situations where I was asked to sub for someone - or an area where I "WANTED" to be an expert - but really wasn't.
Many times, after a talk, I find that something I said was just plain wrong - it happens - to everyone - even the best speakers out there.
They key is, as an attendee, to not sit around and waste time listening to a bad speaker. I just quietly walk out, picking up an evaluation form in the process, and making sure the instructor gets my feedback.
As an occasional bad speaker - the best thing an audience member can do for me is to let me know if I have gotten it wrong! In the end, the only way tp turn a bad speaker into a good one - is through feedback - even if it is "YOU SUCK!"
I once attended a Windows 3.1 seminar back in 1994 where some jackass kept complaining that I sat in HIS chair (out of 300 identical folding chairs) after the lunch break.
He was about a foot taller and at least 30 lbs heavier than me. I finally told him to shut the hell up or we could go outside and I would kick his butt. He shut the hell up and apologized later.
That's about all I remember from that seminar.
5 minutes later, by accident, he clicks on the link, triggering a cascade of pop-ups with naked men in front of the class, which was laughing it's lungs out...
This was a class offered internally by Intel --
...... I lasted until the morning break - then went back ot my office to get some work done .....
So this total propeller head who's teaching the class says "Perl is the easiest language to learn - very natural and logical syntax"
Its not the years, its the mileage
I once had an instructor at an introductory level programming class (which I was required to take and they refused to let me test out of) try to insist that in C and C++ the int in the line:
int main()
stands for initialize. No amount of arguing with the instructor could convince him that it was declaring the return type of the main function as an integer. As it happens the instructor was also head of the computer science department. I spent the rest of that semester teaching the entire class after the instructor left because I felt bad for them. They all agreed I did a much better job than the instructor. I would have gotten a job as a teacher there, but they couldn't afford my rate.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
You are of course correct, but if you speak with some business people you will be surprised why some businesses (and even individuals) take courses and enroll their staff to workshops and training sessions. Sometimes training is done not in order to actually learn something, but only because of various external requirements (eg legal, or requirements imposed or recommended by professional bodies), obscure accounting motives, publicity or advertising reasons ("we spent a million in staff training last year!"), hierarchical or careerist reasons ("manager: I will enroll my staff in extensive training so that my boss can't use their lack of skills as an excuse to fire me for hiring incompetent employees" or even "I, as the training manager, must make everyone attend training sessions because it's good for making me more important within the company"), or sometimes even irrational psychological reasons ("if we lose, it won't be because we didn't try hard but because out training was useless, so it's the trainer's problem not ours"). Yea I know all this is completely anti-productive and irrational, but I have actually seen all this being done in dysfunctional companies (sometimes even required by external agencies or bodies).
many university lecturers get sent free books and gifts by publishers, the publishers hope that the lecturer will use it as the basis of their course, in theory if the lecturer has good ethics s/he will choose the best book for the job. However, they might curry favour with a particular publisher to get their own book into print, or might use a book written by a friend as a favour.
When I was at university (too many years ago) some lecturers pushed very hard to get you to buy their book, making it clear that the notes from their lectures would be insufficient - those lecturers were usually a bit crap, coasting through the lessons and so meaning you just didn't have sufficient material to get through their exams - i.e they were able to avoid the hard work of preparing good lessons. Most lecturers were quite good, the books were supplemental, but if you took good notes and borrowed a book from the library you'd have fairly comprehensive coverage.
I'm attending a course on web design in my college this semester.
The TA that's giving the lectures:
However, two years ago I took a course given by a guy who told a friend of mine "Stop surfing the internet! Or else you won't know how to use Internet Explorer!" (yeah, it loses a bit in translation).
He could spend two hours explaining how to navigate to a bloody webpage from IE 6. And then how to add a crappy link to whatever IE calls bookmarks.
And when I said "could", I mean "did".
Repeatedly.
By the FSM's noodly appendage, I wish I was making this crap up.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I was at a conference one time where an HP guy gave a lecture, and during the Q&A people asked why HP hasn't moved to 64 bit yet, like DEC had, etc.
Guy got really mad and started pretty much yelling at people, saying that 64 bit has twice as many bits and is therefore half as fast as 32 bit computing.
People didn't even bother laughing at him. Everyone just looked at him like he was an idiot.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I felt bad for the presenter of a two day course on SOA. No one told him that our business model revolves around building totally custom solutions that are rarely, if ever, allowed to talk to the open 'net. I finally explained this to him and he looked crestfallen. He asked the class (of engineers) and everyone agreed that we couldn't use any of it. A waste of time for all involved, costing many thousands of dollars.
Did you do the attendees a favor and correct the lecturer, or did you just let the misinformation run wild?
I went to this PLC (Programmable Logic Controller, that's industrial control for you computer geeks). It started OK, with some drone showing off Schneider Electric's new Contactor (the TeSys U, a "smart" contactor with a LCD display, over/under load protection, short-circuit protection,.. whatever). Later on comes this guy, making some really bad jokes and then laughing himself -- the rest of us just laughed at the way he laughed, he was really loud. So, he shows some PLC basics. All was fine...
Next day he said, well, we're finished with the PLC stuff (actually we were finished with some really really bird's eye view of Ladder diagrams), now we'll see some SCADA. So the guy start showing this REALLY CRAPPY 16-bit app, and he showed ONE BY ONE every single widget (buttons, bar graphs, even some motors that changed colors to show when the output was running). And the library was H U G E. THOUSANDS of widgets. And he showed them "oh, look at how many of them there are! Just see how flexible this program is! See! We even have traffic lights! Buttons! Little trucks, big trucks, cars...".
I went outside and came back in 1 hour, and the guy was STILL SHOWING the fucking widgets and how to place and connect them. Needless to say, I didn't stay.
Or some such similar nonsense.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My experience with the CompuMaster "Mastering Java Web Applications" was disappointing to say the least. Anybody considering one of their courses should reconsider.
..."
1. Two ancient computers for 3 students. 933MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM running XP. It literally took minutes for the Java IDE we were using to load.
2. Instructor was completely unprepared - we had to download the Java JDK over the hotels dog slow network and install it ourselves - taking up most of the first morning.
3. The instructors idea of "teaching" was reading verbatim from the powerpoint and the ~50 page info packet we got. Any attempts to break him loose from that revealed that he was completely clueless.
4. That 50 pages of material consisted mostly of step-by-step tutorials of the trained monkey variety (push a button, eat a banana) which were completely bug-ridden. And this is for a class which this instructor alone claims to have taught 6 times before.
5. At the beginning of the class the instructor asked what we wanted to accomplish. I spoke up and said I wanted to learn how to set up a web service. With 2 hours left, I brought it up again - his reply was to find a section on web services in one of his big Java books, put it in front of me and say "here, look at this." I asked him point blank if he had ever set up a Java web service. No
6. The class was 0900 to 1600 with a 1.25 hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks per day. So about 11.5 total hours of "instruction" for about $1200.
Now, I didn't expect to "master" java web applications in two days. But I did expect to come away with a good feel for what they were, where to start, etc. I've taken other short courses on engineering subjects and have been generally happy with what we covered. But they were much more intense, focused, fast paced, and usually put in at least a 10 hour day. And the instructor was generally a recognized expert in the field. This guy did have all the certs though - he rattled off a whole alphabet soup list of them at the beginning of the class.
On top of all that, the guy was a complete MS shill - but he always prefaced those statements with "I'm not a microsoftie but
All in all, a very disappointing experience.
We did complain, and the company offered to credit our tuition toward another of their classes. Sorry, but my time is more valuable then that.
In university I took a discrete logic course taught by a tenured professor who was one year away from retirement. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he showed up to class, opened the textbook, and proceeded to read it to the class in the most monotone voice I've ever heard. There were over 100 students in the class and the average attendance was about 5. Despite the effort involved in keeping my eyes open, I went to nearly every class.
There were two midterms that were each worth about 20% of the final mark. On midterm days everyone had trouble finding a seat. The best part was during the second midterm the guy sitting next to me turned to me and asked "So... like... when do we have to write the second midterm after this one?" When I told him that this was the second midterm and that he'd missed the first he turned as white as a ghost, put his head on the desk and started shaking. It made sitting through all those boring classes worth it.
I'm not dead yet!
I was in a training session where the 'instructor' was asked what a double was and he explained it was called a double becuase it held two variables. I almost walked out of the class.
The university for which I worked promised an "advanced" email workshop. Thinking that I might learn something halfway interesting or useful about the filing system or filtering or whatever, I signed up. After all, I act as my department's tech rep and have to keep up on things in order to counsel my colleagues!
So I waltz into the computer labs one sunny August afternoon, ready for my "advanced" workshop fun. And what awaited me was the most painful IT experience of my life as the instructor walked us through the "advanced" complexities of logging in, clicking on subjects to read messages, clicking on buttons to reply or delete. We didn't even get to Reply All, CC or BCC, let alone folder, filters or the rest of the software options I'd expected them to cover.
I asked why this was considered to be at an advanced level. The woman running the workshop said that this was as much as anyone needed to know about the system, really. That's when I tuned out and starting making some ASCII art to pass the time.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
Needless to say, the talk contained no useful information at all.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I took the advanced C++ class at my university the first quarter after they made the class transition from Pascal. I had prior work experience as a C++ programmer, so I figured it would be an easy A. Boy, was I wrong!
The professor was like 80 years old. He must have been around before they developed the one in binary and only had zeros. That in itself isn't so bad, except that he didn't bother to even crack the book to teach C++. He'd give examples and try to work problems on the whiteboard in some kind of pseudo language that wasn't Pascal, definitely wasn't C++, and that hopelessly confused the students who didn't have a really good grasp of the language. Oh, it gets better, though.
His TA, the girl who graded our labs, knew even less. We had a lab where we had to implement a complex number class, ho hum. The instructions stated that we had to develop methods to do things like add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc. complex numbers, but they didn't explicitly state what we had to call our functions.
Any C++ programmer worth anything would know that the obvious thing to do is to overload the +, -, *, and / operators so that they could accept complex number arguments and return the appropriate result. I spent a few hours working on it, churned out my class, and when I got the lab back, she had failed me!
I asked why she gave me an F, and she explained that I was supposed to implement the functions using names like add, subtract, etc. I told her that that was nowhere in the instructions for the lab, and she admitted that it was okay to use other function names, but operator overloading was a no-no. Of course, I asked why, and her answer—I kid you not—was that because if you overloaded the operators, other programmers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between your class and built-in types. I argued vehemently that that was the point of operator overloading, that it was an extremely common practice in C++, but she wouldn't be convinced.
It was toward the end of the semester, so I took the lab to my professor and explained to him what was going on. I even took a C++ best practices book with me to show what I was talking about and to prove that I'm not some crackpot stupid student trying to eek out a few extra points. The professor proceeded to explain to me that the university had just informed him that they were letting him go after the semester, that they were firing him. (His words exactly, not mine.) He said that if I had a problem with my grade, I needed to take it up with the TA, because he wasn't going to override anything she said.
In all the programming classes I took at the university, that was the only one in which I got a B, and I was absolutely furious. Not so much because of the negligible impact to my GPA, but because it's the only time I've ever gotten a grade that I truly felt like I didn't deserve, and it was all because of an idiot professor who didn't give a damn about anything (gee, I wonder why they fired him) and a TA who didn't know crap about the subject that she was grading us on.
It's too bad, too. All of my other experiences at the university were relatively pleasant, and I'm a life member of the alumni association today. But that one incident still sticks in my mind as the height of stupidity. I wish now that I had had the balls to escalate it to the dean or maybe even higher. I can't help but wonder how many students failed or otherwise did miserably in that class because of him, and I can't help but wonder if any of them gave up computer science because of that bad experience. God, I hope not.
I swear to God, the first words from the presenters mouth: "That Exchange thing Microsoft is building is no threat to us, and here is why....."
My worst one was an online 2k3 server admin class using a combination of gotomeeting and teamspeak. Supposed to be 5 8-hour sessions, one day a week. Before the class started, we were given instructions to install VMware, download their edu-licensed images of 2k3 server and XP, and perform a few basic steps to get them ready for class. Basically, set up a virtual network in VMware and configure the sessions. Minimum specs of broadband connection, 1 gig of memory, a P4 CPU, and XP were listed in the instructions.
Nobody bothered to prepare. The first 8 hour session was pissed away with the instructor and tech support walking people through downloading, installing, and configuring VMware and the pre-packaged system images. I was flabbergasted. These people can't even follow simple directions. Nor could they follow the live remote session while the instructor walked through the process of installing the software and configuring it. "Click this then this then that and hit next." "I'm lost. Can you help me when you're done with Fred? Thanks." And by "help", they mean "do it for me".
These "students" couldn't even install a frickin' application and they thought they were ready to handle running servers? That's like showing up at a cockfight with an egg and hoping people will wait for you to catch up. Nevermind the guy on dialup or the one with a P3/500 and 192 megs of RAM. Thank Jebus I was taking the "class" at home. I stuck my 2/3 full Heini keg in a bowl of ice and finished it off while watching movies and listening to the class session babble in the background.
Oh, and there was the unix class with an instructor who didn't know unix. That was pretty lame. A student would sit at the class' VT100 terminal and test her material real-time. Nod if she was right, and she'd move on. If not, "Oh. Okay. I'll figure out the right answer after class.". Yes, I said VT100. With the green phosphor screen. What of it? (Actually, may have been any of the VT1xx terminals. I don't recall the specific model, just the shape and the fact that it was from DEC.)
Hey, you had it great.
A teacher does not by definition know everything; very often, teachers are wrong about stuff, too.
A teacher who can stand being corrected is nearly a treasure to be cherished these days.
Some of the teachers I've had have been patently wrong on come counts, blatantly unknowledgeable on others, yet would not accept any kind of correction, criticism or comment.
I got my revenge by getting a high grade and writing a poor evaluation.
Now if only those evaluations really meant something...
Ignore this signature. By order.
When communicating with other people, what words mean *to you* doesn't count for much. In the context of web content, static means unchanging _from the server's point of view_. Whether the client thinks the content changes or not doesn't matter. Flash is (usually) static content, for example.
.cfc which responds to AJAX requests, and he loads all of the dynamic data as JSON during onLoad, and then he uses DOM manipulation to add the information to the page. What a MESS!! All because he used a CMS for something it's not meant.
WebGUI has some support for dynamic content, but I'm not familiar enough with it to know how much (I'm thinking of the thing where it takes a SQL query and turns it into a table or whatever). But what the guy you were talking to meant, is that if you put a PHP script into the WebGUI edit box and save it, it just spits the PHP back when you request the page (static content) instead of *executing* it (dynamic content).
I'm actually dealing with some pages right now where the content needs to be dynamically generated, but the original author wanted it integrated with WebGUI. So what does he do? He writes a ColdFusion
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Roll on second semester, we look at our timetable and see a compulsory course with marked attendance called "Computers for Chemists". Hey we think this might be doing cool things with pc's (we were young and naive) but no. The first lecture starts with the Prof holding up his laptop and saying "this is computer" then he holds up his mouse and says (go on you can guess) "this is a mouse". It got worse after that.
I didn't learn anything about computers in there but i did learn how to sleep sitting up in a lecture.
Got similar from the "Intro to C++" professor I had. "I'm now showing you an array, which the school doesn't want me to teach," he said. When queried why, it turns out that the morons that the "guidance counselors indicated had high computer aptitude" couldn't wrap their heads around a basic, simple array. We had OUR education dumbed down 'cause of some kid that shouldn't have been in the class to begin with.
Oh you're telling me. In Ontario, Canada about 4 years ago we were using PII-400s with 4GB hard drives and 64MB of RAM to install Windows NT Server 4 as part of our Advanced Operating Systems course component. Suffice to say it took all class to format/install the OS. Then the instructor informs us that the next class's itinerary included formatting and re-installing NT so we could become more familiar with the installation routine.
A few of us who were expecting to delve into Linux, Windows XP, domains, etc. at the time asked if we could divert and do some other activities or atleast explore the NT server we'd already installed and he told us no, he couldn't set up individual lesson plans for select groups so we'd have to follow with the rest of the class. So we all developed mysterious illnesses the next day.
This class was an advanced component covering operating systems in an industry grade (and "industry developed") three year program and it listed no pre-requisites. Some of the people in our course couldn't even type letalone operate a modern PC - forget servers, switches, routers or the like - a word processor was fascinating and the rest of us had to suffer for it.
Our Telephony course had a mid-term required 30 page (double spaced) report due on the history, present, and future of telephony (one could easily write 300 pages but I digress). So here I am busting my hump, dissapointed in myself for only managing 26 or 27 pages, which I hole punch and hand in in a nicely coloured duo-tang on the prescribed day and what do I see from my classmates? 2, 3 and 4 page reports with a staple at the top corner, pictures galore (lots of photos of Alexander Bell, pictures of old telephones, new telephones) and due to the overwhelming complaints of the students the teacher had to give these people 'A' grades. So 4 pages double spaced with extra wide margins and 25% images with huge headers printed with 30 point font get an 'A' which completely invalidated my 27 page hand-in.
n.b. Our final exam in that class was open book in absurdia. Anything you could bring in on paper was allowed. If you could wheel a filing cabinet into the exam room it was permitted. The failure rate was more than 60% until the students whined.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
I worked for a corporate training company in the early 1990s. One client was moving from mainframes from UNIX and the unhappy employees were forced to train on UNIX or find work elsewhere. Naturally they took it out on the instructor. The worst was a guy who didn't touch type, but did all of his typing with the eraser end of a wooden pencil. The only thing more terrible than watching paint dry is watching the pencil-eraser-typing guy learn vi.
The lecturer claimed he'd previous been working in the industry developing embedded C code. After 15 minutes of him explaining that # directives are evaluated at runtime, I couldn't take it. I put my hand up and simply said "you're wrong. That's what the precompiler does". I had a reputation for knowing what I was on about (I was there for a qualification, not because I didn't know C). He went beetroot red. In hindsight I should have talked to him after the class and had him correct his mistake the next week, but hey I was a cocky 18 year old, and he was talking BS. He was a nice guy and was genuinely trying to be helpful. He just wasn't very good.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You mean like Apple, Microsoft, Digg, Yahoo, Mozilla, Adobe, and Download.com? Even AOL.com has a tableless layout.
It's not necessarily easy, especially when dealing with IE quirks. But many complex sites have switch to tableless presentation.
http://web2.0flow.com/top-30-popular-websites-are-not-using-tables-as-main-layout-structure/
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
Well, one thing that was correct in the article: tables are still the best way to organise a html page. At least for relatively complex websites. There is absolutely no replacement for tables, when it comes to aligning elements to each other, both horizontally and vertically.
CSS just doesn't cut it for relative positioning to multiple elements in a column. For simple layouts, CSS is great. It works, it looks neat, and is very maintainable. But as soon as you start needing a proper grid style layout, it just falls to pieces. There's no way that CSS can replace tables in that instance, unless you use absolute positioning and meticulously calculate the exact sizes and positions you want. But then you're left with a complete mess, much worse than using tables to begin with.
As long as you keep the table as simple as possible, and use CSS to layout the simple elements, then it's still very maintainable. Just try to avoid using tables for every little thing, and the design is generally fine.
Whoaaaa there. Why is this modded +5 insightful? The parent is completely wrong. Tables are not, at all, the best way to organize an html page. Why? Because that's mixing the appearance of the page with the content of the page. Once this happens, pages have to be individually maintained.
It's true that CSS grids are hard.
This is because they are so much more flexible than html tables for layout.
There are a number of pre-existing, opensource css grid setups available (check out http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/), if you don't want to reinvent the wheel.
Also, one can absolute position columns by percentage of the page, which generally answers parent's fear of layout math.
In general, the attitude of the parent is exactly what web professionals have been fighting for the past
Could you provide us with an example of a website that is too hard to do in CSS? I think that would argue your case more than "yes it IS still needed."
I think people here assume you are cutting complex (non-rectangular) pics in pieces and putting them in td cells. This would be a bad way of implementing a layout, since it's easily placed in a div in its entirety, then positioned anywhere on the page. I assume you're aware of this though, and am interested in seeing a use of tables (outside of tabular data) that couldn't be solved with CSS/divs.