So I think what the article asks for (i.e. to bring some more objectivity into the "alchemy" of code preference) is a great ask. However I agree with you however that his examples feel cherry-picked (and I sense an annoyance at FP). I suppose the most valid case would be to both real world problems and real-world change-requests to those problems.

I tried to make a programming challenge based around this premise: http://alexrohde.com/zennish/index.html#/challenges but it never seemed to interest many people.