I was thinking the same thing. When our team originally brought HAML to me, my initial reaction was similar. There's not enough value here to justify hitching the wagon to this (at the time) small project. Rather than react immediately, I took a couple of hours and converted some ERB templates to HAML. The end result was so much more readable, and because HAML uses document structure for interpretation, far more consistent.

So, I'd take issue with the author on the following points:

* I find HAML more readable than HTML

* I find that HAML also gets you better structure and consistency in your view files

That's enough for me.