It's not that they're wrong so much as that they're incomplete. The author has a very CRUDscreen/.NET/VisualStudio-oriented worldview, and his tips apply to that but probably won't be applicable generally. If you're working at Google, for example, an ORM is probably the last thing you'll reach for. And if you're working in an agile web-shop with RoR, generics are utterly useless.