I don't know if it started with pi-hole but one of these projects must have been the turning point for "load up an SD card and let your pi run for years at a time with nothing else". That's how a lot of people use them and especially with recent prices it's pretty wasteful.
I have 2 pis and both run multiple of the programs that people usually run solo on a pi (Octoprint, MPD server and player, UPS controller, (Zig|ZW)2MQTT and so on)
With recent prices I agree it's a problem, but they were otherwise cheap and borderline disposable computers.
I have a Pi3 that's dedicated to Octoprint - just because I want it to have all the resources when printing and I have some heavy plugins (the Arc Welder, for one).
However, the Pi4 is running Home Assistant and several other things within HassIO, like Adguard, NodeRed, the UPS monitor, Tailscale, etc. It's a much more powerful Pi, with 8GB. I would replace it with a TinyMiniMicro if it died today. Although, given that it's currently sitting in a rack, I want to also give it control of the rack fans(heat dissipation is not a problem most of the time) and add some RGB lighting, which would be perfect for the Pi.
I'd argue that, given the current prices, if you don't need the GPIO pins, the author is correct.
