Well the real issue is defining what's better. And the worry some of us have is this new trend of grappling with increased complexity seems short-sighted; we don't like the direction it's going. As much as Sussman shows understanding of the current situation, what he's saying is also a criticism--doing this sort of ad hoc "science by poking but not really science" is the heart of the issue.

And what's interesting is if you look at actual scientific research around programming, say dealing with concurrency and advanced tools like model checking, etc—all of that is very theoretical stuff that assumes you know SICP or have equivalent foundations. So it's not really an argument that theory is dying; in face of this new level of complexity in practice, perhaps we could benefit from theoretical research now more than ever.