Not sure if you're kidding or not, but to write great maintable code, you need a lot of understanding that a LLM just doesn't have, like history, business context, company culture etc. Also, I doubt that in it's training data it has a lot of good examples of great maintainable code to pull from.
Neither do most humans writing such code, i have seen llms generate better code than 90% of coders I have seen in the last 20 years
Awesome! However, the corporate is excited with using AI, making the coder the one who's at risk at getting fired for writing the exact same lousy (for the sake of the argument) code.
Or worse: for not relying as much as possible to the AI who apparently can write just as bad code but faster!
A subtle detail: you speak of coders, not software engineers. A SWE's value is not his code churning speed.
Admitting you've spent two decades on a career stuck working in the kind of sweatshops that hire people who can't actually code isn't much of a flex, and certainly doesn't lend a whole lot of credence to your argument.
This says more about you and the people you work with. I find engineers that have been at the company for a while are quite invaluable when it comes to this information, it's not just knowing the how but the when + why that's critical as well.
Acting like people can't be good at their job is frankly dehumanizing and says a lot about your mindset with how you view other fellow devs.
Please let's stop with the "but some humans also suck at this so it's ok if LLMs also suck at it" argument. It doesn't add anything to the discussion.
He isn't kidding. I have a directive to write the shortest, least complicated, readable business code and it makes a huge difference
Sometimes, as in the bilsbi's top level comment, the solution is to use a free tool/library/product that already exists. The solution is not always to write new code, but the agent will happily do it.
Maybe that's "the manager's job", but that's just passing the buck and getting a worse solution. Every level of management should be looking for the best solution.
"Be sure to remember software is a sociotechnical system and dont fall prey to the Mechanistic myth"