I like the point about building systems that take care of themselves and are largely hands-free. I'd say that applies regardless of platform (or "shininess"), though. The author has clearly internalized one of the more important lessons in engineering in terms of designing for maintainability (with an ultimate goal of zero/low-effort maintenance and/or extension).

I'm not sure the platform itself is as important to achieving this goal so much as the decision-making ability of the engineers themselves, though. Maybe a tendency to pick shiny because of shiny is just a way that poor decision-making surfaces? However, I don't see a problem picking an appropriate solution that happens to be shiny.

Anyways, kudos for sharing the wisdom.