I feel one need to also have developed the intuition by writing lots of code for reading to be really effective.

An an analogy I’m reading a lot of German those days as I’m aiming to become fluent, and it’s very effective to improve only because I spend so much time developing a the intuition by going through the whole grammar, forcing myself to write, forcing myself to speak, etc. Doing only the reading improves your pattern recognition, but doesn’t make you go as deep as one who also writes and speak. If you combine the different aspects they reinforce each other and you progress way faster