I don't think Lengyel is criticizing anything for just being ugly. When he says something is janky, it's because there's something mathematically wrong/incorrect/broken with it.
Lengyel's post doesn't discuss the whole plane-based vs. point-based war at all, and he makes it clear in his book that both approaches are equivalent. He actually says both are happening at the same time whichever way you look at it, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. Gunn is not one of the authors of the material Lengyel is talking about in his post.
I've had the misfortune of interacting with some of the engineers at CD Projekt Red in the course of my job in the past. There is a serious competence issue. It's not surprising in the slightest bit that they have this many problems with their release. On top of that, those engineers were arrogant AF when I talked to them.