The issue with DDD is not in the philosophical concept. In that he is spot on. Things are in hierarchies, everything is described by a combination of two or more patterns that are more fundamental than those below.
The problem is always in people thinking it is an easy magic solution. DDD is not easy. If it were it wouldn’t do anything.
It is in fact very challenging to come up with an ubiquitous language, and to have it evolve as our own understanding evolves.
Organizations looking to use it to make things easier, are doomed to fail. What it can help with is making things good and right and even beautiful in how a problem is solved.
I'd like to complement that. Defining/Discovering the vocabulary for the Ubiquitous Language along with Bounded Contexts (Strategic Design) is where most benefits come from. And is, as said and I agree, the most difficult part - there are no recipes, shortcuts or tools to do that for you.
It doesn't help that there is a bunch of frameworks, libraries, articles with "DDD" on their name, mindlessly gluing together patterns and segregating them into layers (Building Blocks). What I see happening the most is people using them and complaining. Which they should.
Of the two parts that compose DDD, "Strategic Design" and "Building Blocks", only one is essential: Strategic Design. But people usually just talk about the "Building Blocks" (a.k.a Anemic Models), as it seems to be the case of "stevebmark" comment. I agree with him that just having Anemic Models, following blindly the Building Blocks part of DDD as rule, is bad. I just think that calling it DDD is a mistake. DDD is the Strategic Design, you don't even need the code for it to work or produce value.
The problem is always in people thinking it is an easy magic solution. DDD is not easy. If it were it wouldn’t do anything.
It is in fact very challenging to come up with an ubiquitous language, and to have it evolve as our own understanding evolves.
Organizations looking to use it to make things easier, are doomed to fail. What it can help with is making things good and right and even beautiful in how a problem is solved.