> In my experience, they know nothing, including how to program.

In my experience (Banking, Insurance, Fintech, etc) they were invaluable.

If, while developing, you hit some ambiguity in the spec, you could always go to the BA that wrote the spec and clarify, and I've never had the situation where they responded "Wait, let me ask the customer"; they knew what the business process should be, what the workflow should be, etc.

It worked for the customer as well - when they had trouble deciding "should or workflow do $FOO or $BAR?", a quick chat to our BA would be enough for them to make a decision.

Now, having worked in Agile shops (which I believe are the majority), there is no space for a BA - the ethos is "through something together, and if the customer doesn't want it, refine it until they do", so any BAs in this shop tend to be superfluous anyway because there is no place for them in the process anyway.

That's a failure of the process, not a failure of the role.