I think the key point that the original article was making was that there is server side generation going on - some server still needs load the file and turn it

I think the key point that the original article was making was that there is server side generation going on - some server still needs load the file and turn it into an HTTP response, with all the correct headers, metadata, etc, and with the correct failures when the file can't be found. This server-side code needs to be implemented (and configured, etc) somewhere. That said, as the second article points out, static vs dynamic can still be a useful abstraction layer, as static servers like nginx and Apache are so solid that you can usually just treat them as part of the basic HTTP infrastructure.