The author makes some valid points, but he seems indifferent to the most important question: why program computers at all? He doesn't seem to enjoy it much (although that may be more of a sarcastic tone). I think we need more devs who do it because they want to accomplish something particular, and less devs who are doing it cause computers are kewl (or to get paid for that matter). With a utility view, the choice of low-high level gets less emotional:

* high-level is more productive in the short run, but may hinder you in the long run

* mid-level (C-ish level) tend to be more portable and more future proof

* low-level will probably give you better resource usage (speed, memory etc), but not necessarily these days

Personally, I find C++ (plus open source libraries) gives the best trade-off, but that's probably dependent on the task (I do audio/video analysis/synthesis).