This is a very old discussion and argument, much older than the current AI push. You're right to a degree but also that hasn't stopped the rise of strong minds for software development. There will always be the curious and the lazy. The curious will always want to know how things work from the chain of events of a button click to the pixel shifts and logic gate flips to display code on a screen as well as run it. There will also always be the lazy unencumbered by such a desire for awareness who just want the magic box to do the thing.

How many software devs can write in assembly? Not many. Not much has changed if anything beyond the ability of the unaware to see their will come into creation. People couldn't make realistic images and now they snap selfies with no barriers to entry. Does that make them a photographer or an artist? Not really.

Could this not be said for IDEs with code awareness such as M$’s intellisense, among other tools that accelerate development speed?

What you are describing isn’t an AI problem, is people taking a two week bootcamp and calling themselves a software engineer.

There's a ton of app builders out there that are basically some crypto scam wrapped around Claude (or whatever). There's a lot of idiots pumping out code slop.

I think there is a middle ground where you can absolutely build apps faster with the help of ai and still get maintainable code.

Just don't let AI write a whole app in one shot. Or even whole features.

Code is probably one of the easiest things to verify, for that reason I struggle to see any other viable uses for LLMs tbh.

user: write code that correctly asserts what 1+1 equals.
LLM: assert_eq!(1 + 1, 4);
LLM: hmmm, that crashed.
LLM: assert_eq!(1 + 1, 3);
LLM: hmmm, that also crashed, I must be doing something wrong, let me try one more time.
LLM: assert_eq!(1 + 1, 2);
LLM: that worked!
LLM Response: assert_eq!(1 + 1, 2);

user: what does this sentence mean? "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"
LLM Response: This doesn't mean anything, or someone really likes buffalo's

I can always run the code to check, I still don't know how that sentence makes sense.