The article misses the point that Spolsky makes: some people are smart enough that they can foresee where the duct tape can be applied (and, by extension, where it would be catastrophic to do so).

This is, of course, a far cry from the person who does everything with duct tape, because it's simpler to do so. And it's also a far cry from the person who always follows his/her standard approach, because nobody ever got fired for [using the safe-but-costly approach].

In essence, the duct tape programmer has a safety margin between the smartest he could do, and what he actually does, and uses this safety margin (1) to make the software actually work, because he can avoid stupid errors, and debug the subtle issues that come up, and (2) to make the software ship on time. Not using your most-advanced-yet-poorly-understood techniques does not mean you'd stick to the stone age approach, but that you're perfectly fine with using stone age tools in addition to the fancy-schmancy newfangled stuff where it makes sense.

I, for one, won't Party with Palermo on this. I'm more cautious of people making their money with agile training than with people selling bug tracking systems.