DNA Is Not a Blueprint

In this article, you cited, I see this text right at the start:

“When I was a young student in Paris, the City of Love, girls at parties would what I did for a living. I still recall their unsettled looks when I answered “molecular biologist,” which would send them running to powder their noses. They never came back.”

“…girls at parties would what I did for a living.”

Is that statement correct? 🙂

Also, this text:

Make a Google search, and you’ll find hundreds of sources (including textbooks and leading scientists) describing DNA as the blueprint of life. It would be a great, easy-to-understand analogy, if it wasn’t wrong and outdated.

Outdated? Does that mean that there was a time, not so long ago, when many thought that “blueprint of life” was correct? What changed since then that rendered “blueprint of life” outdated?
More research discoveries, thank to advanced technology?
Something else?

The DNA binding sites for TFs contain codes for activator/inhibitor logical combinations associated with either transduction signal pathways that link the extra-cellular environmental signals to transcription regulation in the cell nucleus. Also relate to the intrinsic cell fate determinants that are segregated according to the symmetry breaking process that takes place before the stem cells divide. As we can see, there’s much outside the DNA per se.
In addition wee still have the histone codes and all the epigenetic paraphernalia associated with the chromatin remodeling and the whole nine yards.
The DNA contains information used for making RNA molecules. Some of those RNA molecules are spliced, sent to the cytoplasm and translated to proteins, using other complex cellular machinery.
Code-wise, the DNA structure is more complex than they thought. But it seems like all that functional complexity is just the built-in paradigm for environmental adaptation and robustness.
However, ongoing research should reveal more details of the multi-level controls for transcriptional regulation.
We ain’t seen nothing yet.