I disagree with the sentiment that you should simply ignore proper semantics because it's inconvenient. As the article points out, this stuff really does matter

I disagree with the sentiment that you should simply ignore proper semantics because it's inconvenient. As the article points out, this stuff really does matter. There are classes of problems that these type of true reference semantics can be quite helpful. In C/C++ the technique is largely used in contexts where you want to return multiple values from a function, as there is no native support for dynamic tuples. Such is the way of statically typed languages. There are also cases where this type of reference to a pointer magic can really improve the efficiency of the algorithm. True reference passing is a tool. For those living in dynamic languages (as I do now), not a particularly relevant one. But that doesn't make the distinction any less important.