I've gotten immense benefit from "guided coding". I've learned a lot, and it's saved me a lot of time digging through documentation. I also don't have anyone dictating to me how many tokens I should be burning, and I'm not forced to review my co-worker's 3000 line PR.

I agree with your last statement. Frontier models are nonsense. We should be concentrating on focused models that are cheap to run, and don't require destroying the SBC industry, and making my hobbies financially out of reach.