It really comes down to the group. Not everyone shares your priorities ("your" being used in this case to speak to any reader). My group at home would give me a "WTF?!" if I gimped a character. My group at college would have probably loved it, and in fact they might have preferred I actually did it with the characters I played.
The group at home is about winning. The group at college preferred shenanigans.
Also I distinguish between "leaving weaknesses" in a character and "gimping" a character. Leaving weaknesses is something you'll end up having to do most the time no matter what because the nature of most systems, invincibility isn't really allowed so you just try to control where your soft spots are. "Gimping" is where you do as the original quote suggests and you deliberately add a clump of shit to your character so that everyone will smell them coming.
I don't gimp on purpose, but I have done it on accident without realizing it until later. I have also been gimped by bad luck or other things beyond my control, like rolling so terribly on my stats that the GM gave me the elite array as a mercy. Most the time I don't think it's a good idea, but some groups really dig it and there's not really anything wrong with that as long as they're having fun (Even if it's for reasons we struggle to fathom). I insist on using plural forms though, because if you want to have a group of clowns I require that it be the GROUP's preference and not just a minority. Clown groups can be fun even for optimizers, because often they just trundle by on ridiculous luck and it can be something amazing to watch. Basically optimizers prefer consistency and can manufacture success, but that makes it kinda generic at times, while clowns just fuck up and traipse through nightmare scenarios only to somehow occasionally emerge victorious. That looks different every time.
Overall I agree that gimping is bad, but there are tons of factors and whether you gimped your character may not always matter, while at other times it might actually have been someone's preference. That preference may be idiotic for every logical reason, but it doesn't exist in territory where logical reasons carry much weight.