Doesn't seem like the author knows C. The C example of codecs is riddled with syntax errors. When he writes

    struct Codec
    {
        *int (*encode)(*int);
        *int (*decode)(*int);
    };

he probably meant to swap the int and the asterisk to mean a pointer to int. But no one would use a pointer to int to mean bytes; we have pointer to char or pointer to unsigned char for that:

    struct Codec {
        uint8_t* (*encode)(uint8_t*);
        uint8_t* (*decode)(uint8_t*);
    };

And that doesn't exactly deal with ownership issues.

But besides those nitpicking, I struggle to see what his point is. His point is to extract common features of components and build interfaces for them? I mean isn't that something we've been doing for a long time?