I agree with most of that article, but the answer to the question in the title is “it depends on the practices”. Some of software engineering best practices are

I agree with most of that article, but the answer to the question in the title is “it depends on the practices”. Some of software engineering best practices are universally applicable, and they really matter. Using version control for source code. Writing functional specs in some form (at least very high level in half page of text) before writing code. Using meaningful names for variables instead of a, b, c, d. Commenting the source code when necessary. The part I disagree is about the OOP. It’s not the best to write software, but very often the best way to design software which has to deal with complicated mutable state. FinTech system running on servers probably doesn’t need mutable state much or at all: things are immutable, transactions are appended to append-only ledgers, and the mutable state is only present in external systems like SQL databases. However, it’s borderline impossible to make a videogame, rich text editor, a file system, GUI framework, or an XML DOM without some form of OOP.