[locknitpicker]

> The real question here is: WHY are you passing a blob of memory rather than a struct that uses the type system to describe and enforce what the contents are?

I completely agree. It's particularly egregious when the blogger complains that the complexity and ugliness lies in the type casting to force an incompatible type where it doesn't belong, and use a reinterpret_cast of all things.

This doesn't even feel like a strawman argument anymore. This sounds like a coding horrors entry.