>I just can't agree with the recommendation to read the comments before articles you find online.Your disagreement makes it sound like he made a universal recommendation for all articles in all circumstances. I didn't read it that way.
He specifically constrained his observation to staying on top of new technical developments in /r/programming and HN:
"When browsing Proggit, I recommend reading the comments before committing fifteen minutes to reading a nicely titled (or click-baited) article."
It looks like his advice meant to be a time management tool instead of a shortcut to disable critical thinking. You have several factors that lead to the comments-first-then-read-article strategy:
1) finite time -- can't possibly read every article -- must prioritize the information overload somehow
2) Sturgeon's Law -- 90% of everything is crap (e.g. clickbait titles)
3) you lack the technical background in the new and unfamiliar topic that's a prerequisite for applying critical reasoning.
>Critical thinking is such an important skill for everyone, not just engineers, and this habit all but eliminates it. [...] But it becomes a habit and can be dangerous in other places ...
I think people can be adaptive and use comments-then-article on certain websites but also use the opposite article-then-comments on other websites.
For online articles of New York Times, Washington Post, and Youtube videos... it makes more sense to consume the content and then look at the comments (or skip the comments altogether since they are often a cesspool of nonsense.) For fast-moving technical crowd-sourced article submissions -- it can be rational to read the comments first.