Why bother with the dishwasher if you're already washing the dishes? I don't do any of those manual steps and my dishes come out clean. Modern dishwashers and soap are very good at the entire process.

1) you don’t need to wash the dishes before loading the machine. There is a filter you can clear food out of but most people don’t know about it. Scrape off the solids beforehand leads to less gunk in the filter.

2) a cycle will typically be much hotter for much longer than whatever you do manually. So the dishwasher is what I trust to fully disinfect my dishes

3) a family of four cooking at home will need a full load every day so it’s a lot more efficient than manually washing and drying everything, especially when both parents work

My wife is convinced that you need to hand wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, so she doesn't use the dishwasher (it came with the house). I actually thought the two types of people in this article were going to be A) people who hand wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher; and B) people who just put them in the dishwasher and trust it will do its job to clean them.