You are absolutely right, it is mediocre crap. The issue is that through the spam techniques described in the article, he can now gain undeserved top 10 ranking

You are absolutely right, it is mediocre crap. The issue is that through the spam techniques described in the article, he can now gain undeserved top 10 rankings for many phrases using pages that have no business being there. If you are not part of the web development community then these discussions will most likely bore the hell out of you. However, if you are, and if you are aware of how many innocent sites Google bans or penalizes on a daily basis, or AdSense accounts that get canceled with no appeal for offenses much less than his, then this stuff actually matters.