he writes an excellent example of why "all that computer sciency stuff" is usefull in day to day programming, yet still wants to take pride in his ignorance, like this is some strange sort of fluke.
You're being a little harsh here. I think he was actually trying to impart the idea that it's worthwhile to have a foundation in CS, even if you don't necessarily work on deep algorithmic code every day. He drew on some (perhaps foggily remembered) CS background to successfully solve a problem, so why knock him?