There are times when a modal input is genuinely useful or indeed necessary, not just programmers being lazy and taking the easy-for-us-but-shit-for-users option. A number of these are already mentioned elsewhere in this thread and the original article, so I'll not repeat them.

> Just don't.

Except where it actually makes sense to. Or you are trying to improve the UX of something that already works that way and you don't have time/budget/permission to reengineer more thoroughly.

Where it makes sense to the “technological hackery” isn't pointless: where the UX pain can't be easily removed the visual hackery at least reduces it to a minimum. Similarly for when you are stuck with the overall design (at least for now) and are trying to minimise the suck for the user.

I'll not disagree with going fancy and adding blur filters & whatnot is showboating, I'm firmly in the function over fancy tricks camp too, but many people want things to look pretty as well as be functional¹. And once you are already doing the functional, the few small tweaks to make it prettier are hardly hard work so don't waste enough time to deserve the level of incredulity you are expressing, so while I might not bother I'd not judge others for doing so as long as the fancy doesn't get in the way of the function.

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[1] heck, some will judge your work on the visuals before even thinking about the functional matters

[2] or take more time than refactoring the UI to remove the need for the modal, if that is possible/practical