Consider this -- if the author wrote a litany of reasons why he thought that chess was a poor way to measure one's skill at board games, and why chess doesn't train you to think creatively as well as writing novels does, and why your chess rating isn't a good metric for predicting how good you are at checkers, how would that differ from the article he's got?

I don't think that programming competitions are supposed to be "worthwhile," nor that they are intended to measure how well you can go on and make big systems in code. They exist because it's a lot of fun to compete in them, if you're of a certain inclination. Isn't that good enough?

The author states without elaboration that "Programming is not a sport like tennis or basketball, where one player/team "wins" and another player/team "loses." Well, why not? It can be if you want it to.