Well, when I wrote a compiler (on a team of 3) the dragon book (first edition) was very helpful, from lexers, parsers, to code generation. So we read it cover to cover (except for Jeanne, who got her PhD from Ullman and who wrote the LALR parser) and used it profusely.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, I think that, in contrast to the OPs article, everyone should read it or Hollub's excellent work that followed the Dragon book by a number of years.

So I would disagree with your opinion about this being a good book, but then I may have the advantage of having spent substantially more time with it.