Whether or not this is possible completely depends on their unique workload. The M1 could probaly obviate any x86 chip for the average programmers. But that wouldn't be the case for gamer workloads, for example.
A high end gaming PC will compile typescript, play games with high quality graphics, and run your 100 browser tabs. Let's be honest, an Intel Core 2 Duo would obviate most programmer workloads just fine.
By your logic the Apple M1 is comparable to a high-end x86 chips, but you go on in the same breath with the disclaimer that it is "only certain workloads."
That is my point. A high end PC doesn't care about your workload. It is unobjectively fast. Period. You are the Tempo driver claiming that you would have beaten that Challenger if the temperature of the drag strip were just a little bit hotter....
But that Challenger doesn't care about operating conditions or workload or whatever. It will win today, tomorrow, and the next day while you're claiming that the Tempo is "comparable in the snow on Tuesdays."
That's absolutely not the case. At least for my workflows. My work-issued five year old Intel i5 XPS would get incredibly slow, and incredibly hot when running unit tests or compiling code in Angular. Goes without saying that a Core 2 Duo would be simply unusable.
My personal machine was a 2018 i5 MacBook Pro. On that machine I could open just one iOS Simulator or Android Emulator and expect to have merely decent performance. And by decent, I mean the system would be running hot, the fans would be loud and the system would be noticeably slower. Having multiple simulators or emulators open is simply not a thing this Intel notebook was willing to do. Meanwhile on my M1, I've ran six iOS Simulators / Android Emulators at once, and the system did not slow down, at all (for reasons discussed in this article).
In a futile attempt to push my M1 to its limits in a dev workflow, I even trained TensorFlow models on it. Surprise, surprise: not only was the model trained in a decent time (for a notebook without a dGPU; I wasn't expecting miracles), but it did all this without any perceptible slowdown in system performance. The absolute worse thing I could have said about the M1s performance here was that the MacBook Air's chassis got a little hot. And keep in mind that when I way a little hot, I mean that it still produced less heat than my Intel notebooks often produce when watching a 4K YouTube video (and it does this all without a fan!).
So in short, no, the Intel Core 2 Duo would absolutely not be fine for my programmer workloads. And, yes, the M1 has pretty much obviated Intel's lineup for my work. Dare I say, the M1 MacBook Air has been the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade I've had as a developer. It's the first notebook I've used where I've never been bottlenecked by system performance. It's a fantastic machine through and through.
I'm usually running 5+ electron programs (IDE, Slack, Discord, etc), multiple browser tabs, test runners (Jest, Detox), IDE plugins (eslint, auto import, gitlens), an emulated terminal (iTerm2), multiple VMs (android, simulator), xCode, Android Studio, and that's just my base setup. From there add more casual programs like calendar, memos, omnifocus, spotify and so on. An intel core 2 duo would thrash at just 10% of that workload.