I think somewhere along the line you may have been confused about what you are comparing.
Jams are functionally equivalent; the choice is inconsequential. This is far from the case with programming languages, which have meaningful differences.
As you mention Jams are functionally equivalent (they provide you with sustinence when you eat them, and they generally taste nice).
However I would say programming languages are also functionally equivalent.
To quote wikipedia:
A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine This implies that all programming languages can be used to control the behaviour of a machine.
Flavours of different Jams are not equivilent (raspberry != plumb because they taste different), just as flavours of programming languages are not equivilent (java != visual basic because they taste different)
Programming languages solve important problems, so a choice will be made. You can't just give up on the whole idea and walk away as with specialty jams.
The beauty of parallel programming is that you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Granted your software may not gain any benefit when running on a multi cored machine, but you program will still work.
To me TFA offers the opinion that most programmers will just ignore using parallel programming, and carry on as they do now if there is too much choice available to them.
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However I would say programming languages are also functionally equivalent.
To quote wikipedia: A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine This implies that all programming languages can be used to control the behaviour of a machine.
Flavours of different Jams are not equivilent (raspberry != plumb because they taste different), just as flavours of programming languages are not equivilent (java != visual basic because they taste different) The beauty of parallel programming is that you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Granted your software may not gain any benefit when running on a multi cored machine, but you program will still work.
To me TFA offers the opinion that most programmers will just ignore using parallel programming, and carry on as they do now if there is too much choice available to them.