This article is BS. As others have noted, it is a straw man argument.
Everyone uses spreadsheets, including developers. I use them. I'm not going to spend 50 hours coding when I can create a spreadsheet in 5 minutes.
Of course, the issue is when things get complicated, as the author and others here have noted.
Creating a CRM from spreadsheets is pure madness, for example, when there are so many other options that exist, without having to custom program.
For me, whenever you have a one-to-many or many-to-many situation, that's where spreadsheets, to me, fall apart.
I personally have used spreadsheets to do my finances, but only because I was too lazy to scope out different bookkeeping systems. I'm fairly expert in accounting, too. I've used a LOT of different accounting systems, and installed and trained people on them. But there's no way that one can get up and running as fast as one can by using Quickbooks or other accounting systems, in terms of all the report features, etc.
Pre-defined apps are fairly unchangeable, but unless one has critical information that depends on a custom solution, it's better to shoehorn your business into a pre-existing app. I do admit that. Very few small and medium sized businesses require that, though, I've never seen one yet that can't use a prior existing solution. Though there might be, but only very, very small percentage, like, less than 1%. However, a large Fortune 1000 enterprise could have stuff they need custom programming, because of the scale. But I don't have any experience with enterprise organizations so I can't comment on that. Maybe SAP or whatever is good for them, I don't know.