> I was probably not alive the last time anyone would have learned that you should read existing code in some kind of linear order
I think you're jumping ahead and missing a point that the article itself made: there are indeed bootcamp developers who were taught this way. I have spent quite a number of hours of my life trying to walk some prospective developers back from this mindset.
That said I think that you could write this entire article without dunking on junior developers and I don't consider it particularly well written, but that's a separate issue I guess.