Sure, nothing wrong with a simple server-side stack. But even then, you probably wouldn't write it (today) by spinning up Microsoft SQL Server on a bare-metal machine so that your sysadmin can maintain its records with MS Access, then writing a bespoke CMS by creating your own prepared SQL statements from scratch, all while making sure your designer knows Frontpage and that you have a WAP version ready to roll out soon.
It's not that the principles are invalid these days, but that the specific examples and techniques mentioned in that text are now often done with different tooling. Significantly, a lot the low-level stuff has also been replaced with higher-level, industry-standard abstractions (which embody many standard best practices that might otherwise take an individual years to learn and polish), building upon the lessons and mistakes learned over the decades. This text doesn't really clarify what is a long-lasting architectural principle and what was just a fashion trend of the day and now obsolete.
Realistically, I think new devs coming into the field these days are likely to first encounter those abstractions (whether it's HTMX or Next) before understanding the history of why they exist (and what their tradeoffs are). Those architectural tradeoffs are important to learn at some point, but usually those decisions are not left to the newcomers (in a sane company) and also should be taught in the context of modern tooling and decisions, not software that was common two decades ago.
Like important questions these days might be (as you said) what do we do on the server vs client JS (or rehydration), what do we outsource to a cloud (which clouds?), what do we containerize or not, how do we deal with HTTPS and mobile and cross-platform (web/iOS/Android), etc. Not "what is the best log parser for Apache" or "should we use MS SQL because it works better with Access". In some companies, it might also be "which off-the-shelf CMS best fits our use case" vs "Is C# or Java or more appropriate for our backend?"
If someone wants to take the time to highlight the specific, still-relevant sections of that text, I think it could be worthwhile. But otherwise, without that differentiation, it's just kinda a minefield for newcomers.
