Docker is the best medium for distributing and running developer-facing software

That's fair, and it's listed in the article as a drawback, but in most situations this is a tradeoff that's worth making.

You can also build the docker image locally to get consistent dev setups. In the end, you will need to pull things from the internet to install, whether in docker or on the host. The consistency is huge. I've seen this prevent a lot of mishap from incorrect versions being around.