It’s all over the net :-(, but seldom pipe cat into while. Why? One,
it is often unnecessary/redundant (if a file use stdin redirect),
two, it creates a subprocess/child process. Take a look at process
substitution, like:

while read name; do echo $name; done < <(..)

Regarding this article, here's another option:

pat='/home/*'
while IFS=: read -r user _ _ _ name homeDir _; do
if [[ "${homeDir}" == ${pat} ]]; then
echo "${user}"
printf — 'Just another way to output: %s\n' "${user}"
fi
done < /etc/passwd

NOTE: (1) IFS is the field separator; (2) _ is just a placeholder,
could be anything; (3) [[ == ]] right-hand side quoted – literal
string; not quoted – a glob pattern (patterns are not regular
expressions); (4) For safety and reliability, it is almost always
better to quote parameter expansions. I use the brace too because as
scripts grow, I may need them, so my eyeballs are use to seeing them
and I'm consistent.

Bash has come a long way and is always getting better. Where once
sed and awk and other external commands were the only way, bash can
do it. There is the '=~' operator to do regular expressions w/in
[[]], and many forms of parameter expansions to create strings, get
substrings, or substitution. I'd keep the bash, awk, and sed
articles separate, but maybe a final one combining as needed.

He is, as he had said, starting at the beginning. What you did, while it maybe correct, has absolutely no place (Nor did YOU give a full explanation) in a beginning tutorial. While your method works and may be a bit more robust, you basically lost all credibility and probably scared half of the green users trying to cut their teeth into not wanting to touch a script at all.

It is, as the other comment inferred, like taking someone trying to learn to swim, and throwing them off the boat, and refusing to get them unless they drown. Simple building blocks helps others gain that greater understanding and expand their own intellect.

I am currently enjoying the article, as I haven’t messed with scripts in years, and reestablishing very rusty pathways. I think he is doing a very good job, and would only ask that, (unless there’s a word limit for his file) to give a few more explanations of some of the path he is using rather than just immediately expose. It’s easy for someone re-familiarizing them self with it, a newbie might get a little more confused. All in all, I think Mr. Hess is doing a wonderful job, and want to thank him specifically for the information he is delivering to the community in clear, concise learning baby steps.

Second, what is this “names.txt” file for?
I see the script writing data to it, but then not doing anything with that file.
I think parts of the code are not displayed.

for i in `cat boring_tasks`; do
automate $i
done

now_do_fun_stuff

Thank you for all your effort and patience.