You are correct that SFTP is not FTP. To be fair to the parent, he didn't say so either. Here are the differences between FTPS, SFTP and FTP over SSH: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol#Secure_F...
It isn't dead and yes, of course, I know the difference between FTP and SFTP.
(To be clear, I'm talking about plain vanilla RFC-959 FTP. Yes, you can add additional security layers on top. Sadly, at least the places I've seen still use FTP are the places that still use it in vanilla config. I have no idea what your experiences are - this is a comment on the general state of FTP users.)