The "defunct" term is an exaggeration allowed due to the fact that the blog audience is composed of "creative" people with focus on fiction and poetry, as you can see from the referenced "Code Poems" work by Hannah Weiner; the author provided an introduction and a not-so-unrealistic status of their use (it isn't a defunct language because you are requested to know them in order to get a boating license; source: I got mine early this year).

I think that @prismatic posted it here on HN because there are people who doesn't know them and are likely to be interested (other than being bewitched by the use proposed by Mrs Weiner).