Hmmmm,nothing at all said about electronics which store gigabytes on a surface almost too small to see, transistors which switch at nanosecond rates, batteries that last for years and run for hours.
Sure glad I didn’t study any of that old electrical engineering stuff.
All the systems described would work in other programming languages (albeit perhaps less efficiently).
But none would work at all without the exploitation of quantum physics provided by the transistor, along with the associated improvements in just plain electronics.
Point! All the systems described WOULD be written in other languages.. but they weren’t! As you said - less efficiently.
As for requiring Electrical Engineering to build the computers, which run on the physics and chemistry of the modern electronics industry - also true.
The realization should be that our progress forward is that we stand on those inventions that came before. Dennis Ritchie was as an icon in the world of Software Engineering. The article is really pointing out that SJ’s contributions really wasn’t as a technologist - and that much of what Steve jobs created stood on Dennis Ritchie’s works.