> "Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineering habits, at both the macro and micro level, are built around this core constraint."

Well, yes and no. While producing two screens worth of high quality code, a.k.a. software engineering was always expensive, "coding" as such, as in producing Nth React SPA or merely typing out code that you engineered in your head, was never that expensive - most of the work is applying existing patterns. But either way, as you wrote the code yourself, you mostly had a consistent mental model of how your code should work and the key contribution was evolving this model, first in your head, then in typing out code. Now here comes the real problem for the LLMs: I think most of us would be fine if the LLMs could actually just type out the code for us after we engineered it in our heads and explained it to the LLM in English language. Alas, they do produce some sort of code, but not always, or often enough not in a way we desribed it. So unfortunately "AI" boosters like Simon are reverting back to the argument of fast code generation and an appeal to us as unwilling adopters, to "change our ways", as it shows they have no real advantage of the LLMs to put forward - its only ever the "coding" speed and an appeal to us as professionals to "adapt", i.e. serve as cleaners of LLM sh*t. Where is the superintelligence we were promised and single-person-billion dollar unicorns, unique use cases etc? Are you telling us again these are just advanced text generators, Simon?