Great usability requires attention to detail. It's the sum of many, seemingly small changes. Have you seen how much work has gone into the "breathing" light on macbooks? Or the math behind scrolling on iOS?
I am a designer/UXer and programmer, so I understand the art behind building software from both sides, believe me.
I have even had to port parts of UIViewAnimation over to JavaScript to enable controllable touch scrolling on both left and top scrollbars on any scrollable element. Turns out that CSS3 animations don't perform anywhere near as well as using this method, but thats another story!
I'm not criticising design, UX or the author's point, because I agree.
His way of going about making that point being completely over the top is what I was poking fun at ;-)
