8 GB RAM is not even enough to do Pro-level web-browsing, so I do agree, this new 14" Macbook Pro is a joke - and let's not forget that swapping can't be good for the storage you can't replace.
I don't think upgradable RAM is coming back to Apple Silicon Macs. Upgradable storage, maybe; and there might be a use for standard RAM as a faster Swap, e.g., in a Mac Pro, to have 256 GB of super fast unified RAM and additional TBs of DIMMs for workloads that need that.
Nitpick: Something is off with the timeline of M2 Pro Macbook Pro ownership mentioned in the article ("Two years ago, I got a 14” MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro processor and 16 GB of RAM.") M2 Pro Macbook Pro were only introduced in January 2023.