Many paragraphs into this article, the author writes "[I realized] with a kind of mild shock that static libraries are actually just archives of object files." [emphasis in original.]
The issues that the author is concerned with here seem to be mainly misunderstandings arising from not knowing this beforehand.
Yes, but I've seen other people go through the same chain of reasoning, and make the same mistake (and this is what led me to write the article).
That is a fair point - I should have thought back to the time when I knew even less than I do now.