> I know why the LLM wrote the code that way. Because I told it to and _I_ know why I want the code that way.

That's a different "why".

  > If people are letting the LLM decide how the code will be written then I think they're using them wrong

I'm unconvinced you can have an LLM produce code and you do all the decision making. These are fundamentally at odds. I am convinced that it will tend to follow your general direction, but when you write the code you're not just writing either.

I don't actually ever feel like the LLMs help me generate code faster because when writing I am also designing. It doesn't take much brain power to make my fingers move. They are a lot slower than my brain. Hell, I can talk and type at the same time, and it isn't like this is an uncommon feat. But I also can't talk and type if I'm working on the hard part of the code because I'm not just writing.

People often tell me they use LLMs to do boilerplate. I can understand this, but at the same time it begs the question "why are you writing boilerplate?" or "why are you writing so much boilerplate?" If it is boilerplate, why not generate it through scripts or libraries? Those have a lot of additional benefits. Saves you time, saves your coworkers time, and can make the code a lot cleaner because you're now explicitly saying "this is a routine". I mean... that's what functions are for, right? I find this has more value and saves more time in the long run than getting the LLMs to keep churning out boilerplate. It also makes things easier to debug because you have far fewer things to look at.