It's quite short-sighted to try to launch a semantic argument like this against the merits of the article. Your logic seems to rely completely on whether this article is a tutorial or a real-world example. It is a tutorial, even though it may be based on a real-world example.

For example, take this:

$messages = array (

    'en_US'=> array(

       'My favorite foods are' =>

           'My favorite foods are',

       'french fries' => 'french fries',

       'biscuit' => 'biscuit',

       'candy' => 'candy',

       'potato chips' => 'potato chips',

       'cookie' => 'cookie',

       'corn' => 'corn',

       'eggplant' => 'eggplant'

    ),


    'en_GB'=> array(

        'My favorite foods are' =>

            'My favourite foods are',

        'french fries' => 'chips',

        'biscuit' => 'scone',

        'candy' => 'sweets',

        'potato chips' => 'crisps',

        'cookie' => 'biscuit',

        'corn' => 'maize',

        'eggplant' => 'aubergine'

    )

);

This is just example code to create the array that he demonstrates how to use. This array doesn't have to be hard-coded, but this article's scope isn't about creating a friendly interface for translators, it's about internationalization for programmers. It is trivial to make a nice little Web application that provides a friendly data entry interface for translators that stores the information in a database. This database can be used to create the array.

There are plenty of tutorials that demonstrate how to interact with a database. This one is about internationalization and localization.