The median developer doing performance work has no background in the subject, they just have a complaint from someone that something is slow, and no real idea how to solve that problem.

By that standard, this guy is doing quite well. It's a good post.

True, I guess I just presume someone blogging about it has more than average insights on the subject, and the bar further raised by posting to HN. They do get to somewhere interesting by the end, I just had to scroll past a lot of basics.