Then, a week later, you can put the ads back in place. All the linking has been done, so now you get people flowing in thru organic SEO. Those people are more likely to stick around and possibly click ads.

Done right, everybody is happy.

On the other hand most users from these sites will not see the ad in the first place because the use adblock

Percentage of people actually using AdBlock: Much less than 100%

* AdSense is commonly known as blogger welfare. There are a few people making huge money from it, but they use techniques you would probably never want to adopt (content farms, keyword arbitrage, etc...). Generally speaking, you use AdSense to supplement your main monetization strategy that should be something better.

* Boxes, like the one criticized in the article, tend to convert very well.

* Programmers are the worst demographic to monetize, particularly with ads, and even worse with the often not-so-contextual ads from AdSense.

* ProgrammingZen and Math-Blog used to receive similar amounts of traffic when I used to have ads on both. I make 4 figures a year from AdSense ads placed on Math-Blog. ProgrammingZen on the other hand generated a few dollars a month at best, much like your experience. Keep in mind that Math-Blog is still fairly technical, so I wouldn't discount AdSense a priori, but the less technical the better (in general).

* Having a programming or very technical blog I'd suggest that you try to monetize/support it through affiliate links to reputable merchants like Amazon. I make 4 figures a month from the Amazon Associates program alone (albeit not from ProgrammingZen alone, of course).