I've been using an x201 for programming and music production (and everything else) since 2014 and don't see myself making a change anytime soon. (Though I recently picked up an IBM server from around the same era for less than the cost of a new cellphone, and now I have what feels like a supercomputer to do offline audio renders and such that are possible on the x201 but take a long time...)

I do enjoy the peace of mind that if I drop my laptop in a lake, the cost of replacement is somewhere in the $100 range and dropping every year. But I agree with the author of this article that it's also a nice way to (without really having to think about it) keep the software I write reigned in and usable for people who don't have the latest multi-thousand-dollar hardware.