If you are fine with it, just as if it's the preference of this fellow, great.
To me, as I too grew up with friction only bikes, and cars and motorcycles with manual chokes that one had to finesse to start and run, I'm fine with an extremely reliable system like indexing.
I also like it simply from a speed and performance thing, sure and fast and exact shifting .
It depends on your use. If I were racing, or simply wanted a racing type road bike, sure, for touring, I much prefer friction, on this particular bike. It is smoother than indexing, and I can make a jump from the small cog to the largest in one fell swoop if so desired, you can do that with indexed bar ends too. I never have to worry about indexing failing, I trim naturally, and easily, without even thinking. It just works well. As for accuracy in shifting, yeah, no problem with that. As for speed, see once again the fact you can move from the smallest to the largest cog with a quick flip of the lever, faster than the, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, of an indexed system, with the exception of bar ends, or the same shifter mounted as thumbies, or on the downtube. Had my indexing not broken, I would probably still be using it. Once it did break, I realized how much nicer friction shifting was, on this bike, for this purpose.
As for motorcycles, I have a Kawasaki Concours 14, and a Ural, so... the Ural is a 2014 with fuel injection though, but still, it's basically old school in every other measure, and it works, for its purpose.