The quote at the top of the page says: "the greatest difficultly of Rails development is that 'best practices' have a shelf life of < 12 months"

Sam is quoting this (as opposed to making the statement himself), but putting it at the top of the page seems to indicate that he agrees with it.

My understanding of the post is that Sam also deplores the rapid pace of change, and has automated his test environments as a workaround.