> What is this bloated article about?

Advertisement. As you correctly parsed, this article was vapid and full of fluff.

Why they write this? Probably as a vehicle to keep up word of mouth amongst software engineers; as we can see in this thread there's no shortage of people to engage with this crap as it had some merit. I can totally see this making the rounds on LinkedIn in search of engagement.

That I had to scroll to the bottom of the thread to find this is interesting, and says something about the general quality of comment section nowadays.