It's a fine post, but two canards in here:

First, skilled engineers using LLMs to code also think and discuss and stare off into space before the source code starts getting laid down. In fact: I do a lot, lot more thinking and balancing different designs and getting a macro sense of where I'm going, because that's usually what it takes to get an LLM agent to build something decent. But now that pondering and planning gets recorded and distilled into a design document, something I definitely didn't have the discipline to deliver dependably before LLM agents.

Most of my initial prompts to agents start with "DO NOT WRITE ANY CODE YET."

Second, this idea that LLMs are like junior developers that can't learn anything. First, no they're not. Early-career developers are human beings. LLMs are tools. But the more general argument here is that there's compounding value to working with an early-career developer and there isn't with an LLM. That seems false: the LLM may not be learning anything, but I am. I use these tools much more effectively now than I did 3 months ago. I think we're in the very early stages of figuring how to get good product out of them. That's obvious compounding value.

>First, skilled engineers using LLMs to code also think and discuss and stare off into space before the source code starts getting laid down

Yes, and the thinking time is a significant part of overall software delivery, which is why accelerating the coding part doesn't dramatically change overall productivity or labor requirements.