Buddy... The whole point of the post is that he wants his students to question whether "succeeding in this market" is really the right choice.
The point is to decide what success is for yourself. Learn everything you can about the thing you might decide to automate. But think before you automate and how you do so because it could cause more harm then good.
making that money, getting that job title, being at that company, working on that project -- are these success?
or is success simply doing the best job possible when writing code?
To me it was actually not clear what his point was.
"Above all, be motivated by love instead of fear."
Sounds great. But not that practical.
Purely anecdotal, I know. But still, I prefer to think that all those people discovered this practical advice and are far happier for it. I've never met one that regretted their decision.
And a professor should take that into account and give practical advice. In the real world, solving haskell challenes (of which the prof is fan of) is unfortunately not that useful. People have real needs for working software to solve their real pain points. Not to worship code quality.
Some projects need obviously better code quality (airplanes, medical equipment..) - but not all of them. And if you want to have sacred code when coding a crude throw away app .. you won't get enough money for that. And positions for academics are limited.