> The author says that developers can do these things.

I couldn't find this in the article.

You sound even more outraged and polarized than OP is. I've met more than one developer able to do this (hint, I can also do it). Some people are actually paid to write networking software, and they often have a clear understanding of how JunOS and IOS work.

This said, for different reasons, I agree that network operations should not generally be done by your development team, but no one is arguing this anywhere.