Given the tone and assumptions the article makes, and the things that are explicitly explained, this seems to be one of those articles where a novice learnt something new and then decided to write an article about it, despite not having fully grasped the concept yet.

As a result, the author has such strange, absolute positions, calling it a legacy that should be abolished (only tangentially knowing some actual use cases), or that strange quote about design principles.

Despite all the talk about security, the whole debacle that argc can be 0 (and argv[0] can be NULL), is completely left aside. This has caused actual security issues quite recently[1].

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/882799/

The security issues the author points out later in the article do have merit.

Unfortunately, the author shot their credibility in the foot by perseverating on use of argv[0]; instead of glossing over it and getting to the point.

Almost any time someone uses the words "legacy" or "modern" in the context of computers, it's a giveaway to me almost always someone has an axe to grind with few or no real deep substantive reasons. I typically read these as:

"legacy" -> anything that has existed for more than a day that I don't understand and don't like that stops me from poorly reinventing the wheel

"modern" -> anything that I dreamt up or heard some other hipster talk about recently that I got hyped about

I would guess the modern principle of disregard for disk space or memory usage :(

the Modern principle prescribe that one should never use software that's older than yourself. Some cults even prescribe that that one should not use a framework longer than you would wear a pair of socks.