Within Excel, ranges ignore blank cells in computation, but a reference to a blank cell returns 0. The idea being that if you specify a cell in a computation, you're expecting something to be there, whereas when you have a range, you may have sparse data throughout that range, and therefore, the result shouldn't break.
I think the original comments are still over the top, as it seems to be arguin that a defined convention exists but the OP disagreed with it.
However if your example is what they were actually complaining about then hell yes.