I reckon a big reason why LLMs are as effective at coding as they reportedly are... Is because most programming tasks (at least those which actually pay) are easy to automate! We *used* to automate these things more!

We just don't because coding makes us feel like big-boy engineers doing Real Work. LLMs provide a means of automation that lets us continue to kid ourselves in this way.

I don't believe we need such a massive hammer for this! One causing widespread harm.