I agree with his assessment. Sometimes ugly terrible hacks are the best solution given the external constraints (time, 3rd party code beyond your control, whatever). And if you have an ugly terrible hack, you should definitely comment it.
Yes, but then you should go back and fix it. One can only hope that there were more "ugly hacks" that have since been fixed.
The measure of a good programmer is not whether he or she recognizes when they're writing bad code, but whether the final result is free of bad code, and thus more maintainable.
I would argue that someone commenting known bad code, but leaving it there in perpetuity is no better than someone unknowingly writing bad code (although the comments could serve as signposts to help someone else find and fix your bad code - but how often has that ever actually happened?).
