> How many people intend to make slow, outdated, insecure software?
The point is that some authors may claim simplicity, some may claim performance, others more security and so on. It is rare to have all adjectives thrown in - and easy to discard when you see them.
>because by now we’re primed to ignore those claims.
Unfortunately, we don't always. If we were ignoring them all, then we wouldn't care. It is that we can't help read and interpret them and have our expectations set up; hence the disappointment when it turned out to be just words.
How many people intend to make slow, outdated, insecure software?
> when 1 (…) substantiated with concrete data
Then show me the data and let me reach my own conclusions. As a bonus point, the unquantifiable adjectives will be removed.
> Unfortunately, they are more often misused or abused than applied correctly.
Which makes them useless all of the time, because by now we’re primed to ignore those claims.