It's not just life-critical systems that require good code. Any large code base that has multiple developers and a long lifetime will quickly degrade into chaos unless the developers take the time to write understandable and maintainable code and refactor it when necessary. And after a few years, all the original developers may have moved on, but people still depend on being able to evolve the code to handle new business needs.
It sounds like the author of the article has never had to deal with any of these issues. That doesn't make him a bad person, but it does mean that his advice shouldn't carry a lot of weight.
The 'life-critical' was just an extreme example. I agree with your point, but also agree with the OP, sort of. What needs to happen is that everyone involved understands the tradeoffs inherent in 'ship it now' approaches. Yes, no one can predict the future entirely, but sometimes you can be pretty sure that the 'fast and dirty' approach is actually OK to take.
It sounds like the author of the article has never had to deal with any of these issues. That doesn't make him a bad person, but it does mean that his advice shouldn't carry a lot of weight.