> Part of the practical degradation of traditional programmers over time has always been concentration and deep calculation, just like in chess.

Fortunately SWEs have the architect path, which frequently rewards having lots of deep intuition even as the details of calculation continue to change. So one question that's urgent but unknowable until we get there is.. are we going to get good architects if they don't come up through the trenches? I'm not sure. All I know is that everyone has a war story about the least qualified ones that got the role without that experience.

Since intuition is what LLMs do more than calculation, it's worth mentioning that this is true but different. They have the collective unconscious of the internet, which isn't taste that comes from good/bad experience. Besides intuition what comes to mind is "good taste".. the actual foundation of good review and really the main job of senior positions in any technical field.