Yes, I agree with the core claims of this article. Agile and DevOps are journeys - you can't do them like "coloring by numbers". You have to learn the situations and learn to make judgment calls, because at its core, Agile is NOT about following steps, but is about making judgments at every point - the right judgments.

SAFe indeed tries to create a "by the numbers" approach. That won't work well. But it is important to not completely dismiss SAFe: it contains a-lot of good ideas. One should view those as merely ideas, instead of a plan.

I don't agree that Scrum is a good starting point for one's Agile journey. I think that Scrum is way too prescriptive. And Scrum is not a good fit for many situations - especially when one has a complex product that will require many teams. Just like for SAFe, one should view Scrum as a set of ideas - not something to follow to the letter.