HN is not immune to cargo cults. SV and modern "tech culture" applauds people for writing blog posts like this: "Today I decided to find out what makes the sky blue! I just thought I'd write a blog post about it." Then the culture is reinforced, as when you mention how it's stupid to upvote the blog of someone who literally admits they do not know what they are talking about, you get shouted down for not handing out participation trophies. And yes, I realize how rude this comment is, and how stereotypically anti-millennial it is. But it's what has been happening on HN for years.
I will speculate that it's because the author mentions "Julia Evans" [1] who is quite famous in this community for their articles. That or more people than I thought didn't know some details about how basic commands/built-in functions work in Unix. Nevertheless, whatever people find interesting, they upvote. Good or not, this article caught the attention of many, that's all.