Who said C, Vim, IRC, and command-line interfaces were simple? They're visually minimalistic, out of necessity originally, but behind the spartan UI (which is appealing to many people), there is enormous complexity in all of those things. No one has ever called Vim simple.

The article never addresses the "anti-intellectualism" point in its title. It's absurd to think that these products--with enormous learning curves, few visual aids, and powerful-but-unintuitive features--represent anti-intellectualism. If anything it's the opposite.