If the author's intentions were to confuse the reader, they sure did a good job. However, if they intented for it to be an obvious joke, I think they went a little too deep, thus failing to get the point across. Or maybe I'm just dumb... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I still feel like a bad coder because i'm not doing it their way. :(
I've only been at it for about 2-3 years, and I must say, I feel this exact same way. Started on the LAMP stack in school and now I know nothing because what I know is "uncool" and outdated since MEAN and all of the encompassing JS libraries have become popular.
I caved and started to dabble in MEAN (even though I haven't perfected LAMP by a long shot yet..) and must say it is the most fun I have had while coding and setting up projects ever, however I can't help but feel it is like you say, "a frigging nightmare to maintain and deploy". Nothing seems intuitive...