Meh, discouraged by some bloggers, sure. Those of us doing web development in that time (I built some pretty large websites in the days before flexbox) ignored

Meh, discouraged by some bloggers, sure. Those of us doing web development in that time (I built some pretty large websites in the days before flexbox) ignored obviously overbearing advice like that. I still occasionally use tables for layout, even when something isn't 100% a grid of data. Granted those cases are quite rare and generally flex is the right solution.