I think you're modifying the argument yourself. I saw, at no point, where the author argued that programming, design, etc. are _different_ from other disciplines. It simply states that the author believes they are better learned by doing than by reading (to over-simplify it). I don't see where the author condemns any other method. I actually don't see any point at which you and the author are in disagreement.
He says, "I’ve long argued that UI design, programming, and product strategy should be learned apprentice-style with your hands and through experience, not through school and pedagogy."
There's a clear implication that there are other things that should be learned using some contrasting mechanism. And furthermore, the author, like many others, misses completely that school isn't meant to be OTJ training. If it were, more than half of your units wouldn't be 17th century female philosophers from Rwanda. To the extent that you directly study programming in school, it is almost all hands-on.
I am in agreement with the general thrust that people learn from experience. My point is that he opens this up with a somewhat false argument that in school you read things in a book and then you're done. That's not the case even at the worst schools (well maybe the worst). And then goes on to suggest that programming, UI design, and product strategy (whatever that is) is some how different. Here my point was that virtually every vocation in the world shares the trait that you need to practice the vocation. That's why there's actual cars in autoshops.
What a structured vocational education tries to do is to move you from topic to topic so that you cover the ground of a professional. This avoids the problem where as an apprentice you become really good at fixing this one particular bug, because that's the main job your mentor gets called out to do. Of course, you can move to a system where there are required skills you must exibit over your apprenticeship, but now you're just moving to structured education in a new cloth.
That is unfortunately how many people learn. I have had my share of design graduates coming to a job interview claiming that they are really best at the conceptual stage. I have later found out that actually even design schools have been focusing on that area.
We are left with a whole new breed of people who are craftsmen but being taught to like they are academics.
I still think you're reading an implication that is not actually being made, and subsequently getting huffy about it. I see no "clear implication" other than "this is not how those three things are most commonly learned currently". I cannot understand where it is that he is posing those three things against all other things.
It's not "a clear implication that there are other things that should be learned using some contrasting mechanism." It's a recognition that "UI design, programming, and product strategy " is not learned in this way, and he argues that it should be.
