Does link-building work as an SEO tactic in cicra 2016?

I'm quite new to the SEO world, right now I'm just a humble blogger and freelancer who writes about programming and tech stuff. Until now, I've used only "content is the king" approach and I always strive to write good content through my blog posts.

I've never tried this other side of the coin, which lots of SEO experts call "link-building" approach. I'm new to SEO and some articles[1] I've read seem to suggest that Google has done something like "destroyed the link farms" of many a people. Whatever that means, does it really mean that this link building approach is never going to work now onwards, and we just solely have to focus on the content approach?

More importantly, as a small time blogger, do you think the link building approach will help me get noticed and bring some decent web traffic to my site? What all can I do to accomplish that?

Links: [1] http://inbound.org/post/view/confessions-of-a-google-spammer