The first thing you found wierd relies on selective quotation, you omitted "because of implicit string to integer conversion". The second is an apologist "but its well documented" defence. Your third point is changing the subject, he was criticising implicit type conversion, you again igore that. The fourth point is not about wanting to use the wrong syntax it is about MySQL acepting valid syntax and ignoring it.
So your whole post is nothing more than simple fanboy apologism.
I'm as far from being mysql fanboy reasonably possible, so no, that's not it. What I'm trying to say is: mixing subjective and objective criticism makes the argument weaker. Don't complain that you lost your data due to a typo (statement worked as designed, you had backups, this was a test database and you'd never do that in production anyway - right?) A complaint about the lack of consistency and not adhering to standards is much stronger and still true.
So your whole post is nothing more than simple fanboy apologism.