This. If you want really good devs, they tend to play around with all sorts of things that don't necessarily have economical value. This includes esoteric programming languages.
Can you give an example of using the context of a previous query?
I applaud you for trying to make a new search engine - it's not something sane people would try to do because of a certain behemoth eating everyone's lunch. It's going to take extraordinary insight and out of the box thinking to get something really good.
A lot of these comments are not fond of the author's arrogance... Which seems to be a little nitpicky.
The techniques won't work if you use them verbatim because someone else who has read the book will recognize it.
He simplifies things to a set of rules, but it's up to you to be judicious on when to use them and to do your homework on what the underlying principles are.