Maybe "Artisanal Coding" will be a thing in the future?
Programming via LLMs is just the logical conclusion to this niche of industrialized software development which favours quantity over quality. It's basically replacing human bots which translate specs written by architecture astronauts into code without having to think on their own.
And good riddance to that type of 'spec-in-code-out' type of programming, it should never have existed in the first place. Let the architecture astronauts go wild with LLMs implementing their ideas without having to bother human programmers who actually value their craft ;)
People still pay for hand-knit fabrics (there's one place in Italy that makes silk by hand and it costs 5 figures per foot), but the vast majority is machine made.
Same thing will happen to code, unless the bubble bursts really badly. Most bulk API Glue CRUD stuff and basic web UI work will be mostly automated and churned off automated agentic production lines.
But there will still be a market for that special human touch in code, most likely when you need safety/security or efficiency/speed.
The difference is that textile machines reliably produce working cloth. LLMs do not, and indeed probably cannot, reliably produce working software. Instead they generate something which randomly has bugs sprinkled throughout such that a human needs to review the whole thing (which negates the gains). This would be like if a textile machine produced cloth that randomly would rip if you tried to use it for anything. Nobody would have accepted such a textile machine, just like nobody should accept LLMs.
Like you can still make Karelian pies[0] anywhere, but unless you follow the exact recipe, you can't sell them as "Karelian pies". It's good for the heritage and good for the customers.
You can also make any cheeses and wines and whatever you like, it's just how you name them and market them that's regulated.
But the comment you reply to explicitly points out the process is in fact relevant as it is itself a cultural artifact. You're not replying to their main point.
How are the customers hurt if their pie has not been baked by a babushka in Petrozavodsk using the old original recipe, but by an anonymous migrant worker in a dark kitchen using an optimized recipe if the end result is objectively the same? The packaging doesn't have to say who it was made by.
I also don't see the problem with the heritage. The comment I replied to already said anyone could call their pies Karelian, so there was no restriction that benefitted the residents of a specific region. I can see a PDO-like carveout that goes "we want to preserve the traditional pie-making of Karelia, so we want this activity to remain economically viable. Therefore, only pies baked in Karelia can be sold as Karelian pies." But I don't see how Sysco baking the same pies and distributing them nationwide helps maintain the heritage.
Even if you make something that tastes and looks exactly like the original, you still can't call it Specific Thing because the process wasn't followed as it's an integral part of the product. Think of it like a trademark. You can't create some brown sugary stuff and sell it as Coca-Cola - even if it tastes EXACTLY like it does.
Nothing about this is about profit or economic viability, it's not even a small part of the equation. The purpose is to preserve cultural heritage and not dilute it with shitty imitations calling themselves something they are not.
The issue is how this will be handled in law. Can the law define this in a way that is not overly strict or overly permissive? The current attempts is effectively the law doing this, but with an overly strict approach of what counts as 'objectively the same' by judging the process and not purely the outcome. Would it be possible to make the law's definition of this more permissive, to focus only on the product produced, without accidentally becoming overly permissive?
Think of it this way. Nobody would eat a Karelian pastry and not care that it's Karelian. That's why they're eating it, otherwise they'd just eat some other pastry without the cultural weight.
It's the same thing with paintings and sculptures. The painting has value because someone thought it up and put the time to make it. And you view it not for the colors, but what they mean. Why did they choose to paint this? What was going through their heads? What is their perspective?
If you just shoot out a painting, it has no value, because the value isn't the painting. It's your take, your perspective, and the painting is a tiny window into that.
Steve Gibson was hand-coding assembly (often beautifully and making for very compact binaries) long after almost everyone else had switched to C language or higher in abstraction. This is the closest analogy I can think of it.
It had it's own cult following, but I wouldn't say it was a massive movement.