It also then argues that developers get RT "for free", which is nothing of the sort since there are many details involved to get it to work decently.
It’s not even clear that it’s the right approach.
A graphics engineer I know has this to say about it. “Telling me you made hardware accelerated BVH is like telling me you implemented hardware accelerated bubble sort.”
I do think it is the/a right approach... when used judiciously and when an alternative rasterization approach doesn't already exist or has obvious flaws. For example, some games use a hybrid SSR-RT reflection; do the SSR first, then fire rays where the SSR misses (insufficient information in screen-space.) I think the UE5 Matrix demo does this. You kind of get the best of both approaches.
The article in this sense proposes a false dichotomy; to choose between the complex "hacks" of rasterization, or the easiness of RT. Except that rasterization has decades of research and solutions are well-known and already implemented, and RT is not 'do the dumb thing and let the hardware do the work'.
I don't think BVH construction is as bad as your friend paints it. There are semi-parallel approaches available, i.e. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327216026_PLOCTree_...