The author isn't wrong about the entry barrier into programming. However, they are wrong about almost everything else; 'Node in a browser', as the author uses it, is just a string of half-understood terms thrown together. Ironically, the inaccessibility of programming is probably at least partly to blame for their confusion.
There is undoubtedly work to be done into making programming more accessible to newcomers - almost all tutorials on code start in the wrong place, assuming a lot of knowledge of the difficult bits but then labouring through the easy ones.
I don't think the problem is tooling, but how we introduce and talk about those tools - you can quickly explain the command line in a way that takes the fear away and gives learners a framework for understanding it, but you have to give that explantion; too often it's skipped over.
There is undoubtedly work to be done into making programming more accessible to newcomers - almost all tutorials on code start in the wrong place, assuming a lot of knowledge of the difficult bits but then labouring through the easy ones.
I don't think the problem is tooling, but how we introduce and talk about those tools - you can quickly explain the command line in a way that takes the fear away and gives learners a framework for understanding it, but you have to give that explantion; too often it's skipped over.