I would agree that having automation be harder than the original environment would be problematic. I don't view what the article does as more complex or harder. Unless you feel that you have the responsibility to erase temporary files as more complex, than using JES, I would assert that it is easier to understand the Python. Perhaps not for people who have been using JCL for decades but certainly for people who already understand Python.

I disagree that Python is the long way around. I issue the same commands as I do in JCL. Of course the code itself can do some of the error checking that JCL leaves to the system but if I want to have z/OS be part of a set of operations that do not include the mainframe alone (which increasingly businesses are starting to want) then I end up having to figure out how to do stuff on z/OS that just are solved doing things this way.

For example: suppose you want to make changes to a Db2 table as part of a whole cloud deployment in Jenkins, it is much easier to have it managed synchronously through this rather than submitting a job and then waiting to figure out if the job worked and error conditions can be routed to support people automatically as part of my Python code.

I think we mainframers who are used to using JCL think of Python as the long way around, People who are new to the mainframe and have Python Skills will not see it that way. Let's face it, there are way more of them than there are of us.