I sort-of agree that the code in the article is not really future-expansion-proof, and in fact, it's not really incompetent-programmer-proof. In the enterprise, you'd probably write incompetent-programmer-proof code, even if you're very competent yourself, just to prevent trouble later.

Kernighan and Ritchie did not need to bother with less profient programmers maintaining their code. They wrote what they and their friends understood, and apparently that was this.

So in short, the GP (bsder) does have a point.