It's all exertion, for both "meditation" and exercise.

I'm convinced that meditation doesn't work for a lot of people because it has too much dogma about what it's supposed to be, and maybe those aspects are valid for certain pursuits, but it obscures the core principle.

Take exercise as an example first. It's also a practice that is layered under heaps of nonsense and complexity or fluffed up with idealisms and systems. If you strip all of that away it's about one simple thing: strengthening the muscles and connective tissues of your body including organs like your heart and lungs. Muscle and living tissue only responds to repeated exertion and rest (rest includes nutrition). If you never exceed your current capacity, it will never grow or strengthen and will probably weaken. So exercise becomes simply pushing yourself a little beyond your current capacity and then properly resting afterwards. How you do that is up to you, taking a longer walk than you did last week, slowly mastering calisthenic poses, progressive overload weight training, becoming actually good at ballroom dancing or ballet, competing in field sports, the same principle applies and you get much the same results.

Now returning to meditation, the first thing we should do away with is the label because it is almost as much an error as calling all exercise bodybuilding. It should really be thought of as "attention training" where you are improving your control over and the capacity of your attention. Like with your body, your mind responds to exertion and rest. Both are required. How you train your attention is up to you, sitting without distraction is perhaps the most accessible but it's about as challenging as limiting yourself to doing prison cell bodyweight exercises. Walking without distraction is a very valid practice but is harder to manage since it requires isolation and freedom from interruptions that many people would find on a walking route. Many other techniques have been developed with many different aids and systems but the important thing to remember is that you are trying to do the same thing for your attention as you are for your muscles, push it a little more beyond your current capacity each week and giving it sufficient rest between sessions (including proper nutrition and sleep). If the usual things that are sold as meditation practices don't work for you then try things that seem more natural to you but which still stretch your attention. This could be viewing a piece of art for a set amount of time, finding a location with a fairly static view and doing the same, holding or placing an item you own in front of you and examining it, repeating a line from a book or a poem, listening to a single note repeated on an instrument or hummed. It doesn't really matter much what it is as long as it takes effort to contemplate it for a long duration and isn't so complex and changeable that it overwhelms your untrained ability to fully consider each part of it. Even more active practices can train your attention like writing, penmanship / calligraphy, painting / sketching, yoga, dance, martial arts and others but they are probably not the best place to start if you are fully untrained.

This dovetails into the point of the article, that programming is a form of "meditation" for many people. Really, it's something that you can infinitely stretch your capacity for and exert your attention on.

Yes a lot of people compared it to exercise. But that's something I don't do either unless it's on my own terms.

I know it would be good for me to work out an hour per day but I don't. I just can't bring myself to it.

It's the same with eating, I'm obese but simply eating less just doesn't work.

I can only do exercise when I combine it with something else. Like exploring new trails in nature.

I just don't have discipline and it's not in my character to build it. It'll just end up a few weeks till I drop it again. And more importantly I wouldn't be happy being a disciplined person.

Mediation probably would bring me benefits but it's just too much friction to get to that point so I'll never get there. I've stopped feeling bad about not doing all those things and instead focusing on the things I can do well and that do work for me.

So the problem isn't with mediation, it's with me. But either way it's just out of reach and that's why it didn't work for me.

The point of programming being meditative is equally the point. It just happens to be a way people can get into that. It's something that works for them. It doesn't necessarily mean that more traditional mediation will suit them.

Personally if my job would change so much and I didn't like it I'd pivot to something else instead. Though that's admittedly not always easy.

Agree with you on exercise. But staring at a painting is to meditation what curls are to building your core. People all recommend the same type of meditation for a reason--so that you can close your eyes, focus on something, notice when your mind drifts, and bring the attention back. You didn't mention anything about awareness or noticing when you lose focus, so your advice seems to completely miss the point.