The rise of the "/Developer" — boosting your career with code

The advantage of the dual class, if you'll allow me to stretch your metaphor, is that you can solo a mission, specially if you have the right gear (open source software) to cover your weak points.

Agreed. And that's a fair point – "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". However, coding knowledge doesn't suffer from this flaw... just look at the tech wishlist companies maintain. The list of projects they wish their engineers would implement for them "just to make our job a little easier" is almost infinite. Being able to knock off a bunch of those w/in your job instead of outsourcing it is really valuable.

I think you missed the point of his coding. He doesn't code part time; he uses his knowledge of coding to enable his primary job. I think this is brilliant. When I became a PM I was in a much better position to guide software updates and recommend "easy win" enhancements because of my coding experience. More people need to do this.