Because they're popular...

They're fluff. Somewhat easy to write and generally find an audience in both the users and the wannabes.

They will write articles about how to use Vi/Vim long after I'm dead :-)

They're one of the social discussions that hackers have, just like football fans discuss about Pele vs Maradona (or these days Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo), boxing fans argue about Muhammad Ali vs Mike Tyson, etc.

I didn't submit this, but it makes me wonder if emacs and vim will go the way of the dinosaur without new hackers seeing articles like this. The internet (and our industry) has a short memory, so if we're not seeing occasional articles evangelizing these technologies then they're actively losing mind-share, which would be sad.

If the article is worthless the issue isn't with the author who has written it and posted it.

The issue is with HNers who have promoted it and highlighted it.

Content marketing. You write articles with the aim of getting people to sign up for your newsletter.