Handwriting machine code seems like an arbitrary line to draw.

I'll preface that "built" is an overloaded term, and different people use LLMs with lower or higher levels of involvement.

But does a tech lead "build" a feature when he delegates to a junior engineer and makes suggestions/corrections as needed?

With modern agentic coding harnesses, the delegation analogy seems much more apt than a compiler analogy, which never really held water.

Even kids write machine code by hand, they learned to do it in math class.

https://learn.cemetech.net/index.php/TI-BASIC:Hexcodes

Computers aren't magic, they're understandable.

But LLMs are magic, and aren't understandable, and that leads to poor results.

I write my side projects with a magnetized needle and a steady hand.