I HATE those sites where popups come up when you are halfway reading something.

Agreed, if I did want to sign up it would be when I've finished, not when I'm trying to read your own bloody content. I often sign up using their own domain with something like sales@ or something ruder. Petty, but it's a small vent. and if one person stops because of it I can die happy.

They kind of glossed over the real value, which is using it as a template to automate a step at a time:

"Each step of the procedure is now encapsulated in a function, which makes it possible to replace the text in any given step with code that performs the action automatically."

It breaks the work down into more manageable tasks. I probably wouldn't give it to users until it was done, but putting placeholder functions is a common strategy.

Not my site, just sharing a link I saw on HN.