Obie Fernandez is a bad ass. He is not hyping anything he is describing his journey. If you knew who he was you would know how much weight that should carry.
It’s not an appeal to authority to listen to an experts journey through new emergent technology and how that has shaped their own professional achievement. If anything that is the sole example of when expertise and authority is really valuable. And discounting most of the article because he says “mongodb was awesome” and “server less was awesome” and “stimulus is just as awesome” is losing the value he offers