Other than some very specific things like the rasterization algorithm for filling in a triangle, you still can't really skip learning the concepts in the articl

Other than some very specific things like the rasterization algorithm for filling in a triangle, you still can't really skip learning the concepts in the article. The concepts are still quite relevant in the post-fixed-function-pipeline world, except you do even more math and even more clever tricks. The GPU and associated API's just nicely abstract specific computations for you like matrix transforms, texture sampling, depth testing, etc., but the moment you want to do anything sort of fancy you're right back into the depths of it.