I believe he's got the "free climbing" metaphor mis=mangled, but oh, well. Even mangled, he's got a point, and it's basically that Charles Petzold did have it right: IDEs rot your mind. I know the author explicitly says otherwise, but if you read the article, that's exactly what he's saying.
programming isn't a sport; we create value for money. our high-level tools help us create value more efficiently.