A few things. First, I'm not sure you actually bothered reading the article, because the conclusion very obviously states what you're suggesting here, in that:
"This post’s intention was neither to argue that DRY or small functions are inherently bad (even if the title disingenuously suggested so). Only that they aren’t inherently good either."
As for the lack of examples, I'd imagine most people can extrapolate and draw analogies from their long and storied programming careers of the sort they stake a claim to. If there's something you'd like explained in more detail, let me know and I can try cooking up a contrived example, but it will remain somewhat contrived all the same.
This article isn't for duplication either - as a matter of fact it's against absolutes and blanket generalizations like "Code smells if your functions are longer than 3 lines", which is something I often come across.
I think what you call "mediocre programmers" -- personally though, I'd like to be more charitable and think of this demographic as the average programmer or the vast majority of programmers -- are also the ones most likely to cargo cult a piece of advice that's sold as "programming wisdom". Any "advice" needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The article goes on to state how important this is, as well:
"As with most other things, “the ideal” lies somewhere in between. There is no one-size-fits-all happy medium. The “ideal” also varies depending on a vast number of factors — both programmatic and interpersonal — and the hallmark of good engineering is to be able to identify where in the spectrum this “ideal” lies for any given context, as well as to constantly reevaluate and recalibrate this ideal."