I'm probably a minority and very biased, but just for the record: I don't know why with Debian people always complain about complex or long installation. Are you guys installing the system 5 times a day or what?
I've installed Debian few dozens of times over last 15 years and it never really bothered me at all. Yeah, maybe the disk setup could be a bit more straightforward (given that in the last 5 installs i always wanted pretty much the same thing (ie. encrypted disk with LVM on on it and a 1-2G /boot aside), but even there, even if I get a little bit annoyed, since that part can ve pretty dangerous (eg. if installing along other data) and hard to change later. It might be for the better that this part forces me to think.
And no, It's not just practice over those 15 years; I never complained about the Debian installer at all.
Sure, I get why people would want to just say "use my disk" and "i'm from this city, shut up", but then again, to me Debian is just not the distro for that. I'm actually happy that the installer is not hiding the steps. And heck, even for a patient beginner, it might be helpful to see a bit what the "anatomy" of the installation is, really about. I get the simplification in the article but no, the installer is not asking you several times where are you from. Location/TZ, apt sources URLs, language and keyboard settings are different questions and people may gain from thinking about them separately.
Again, I get that many people just want to install OS and move on, but then again, isn't this why Debian derivatives exist? I will probably never install anything else than Debian on my HW but at the same time I would never recommend Debian to an "average" desktop user (unless I know they have the curiosity, bravery and opportunity to undergo the process of learning how their distro works, warts and all.)