Operator Pattern

It seems like operators extend kube into the application administration editing arena:

  kubectl get SampleDB                   # find configured databases
  
  kubectl edit SampleDB/example-database # manually change some settings
  

That's on top of the application editing that's done to create the application in the first place.

Isn't kube supposed to automate the deployment and up time of applications? It seems to me like an anti-pattern to ever have to use "kubectl edit <blah>".