It's worse than that. The whole article is attacking a straw man, which so many software blog articles do. I'm not sure I would take the example in a Wikipedi

It's worse than that. The whole article is attacking a straw man, which so many software blog articles do. I'm not sure I would take the example in a Wikipedia article to be the pinnacle of software engineering. Sure, it would be strange to see the sample code appear as-is in a code base. I would agree that a strategy for adding and subtracting might be overkill. But it's an example! It's purpose is to convey an idea. If you're going to critique it, you really have to do so on those grounds.