"AI has dramatically accelerated the path to a first working version. It has not shortened the distance between a first working version and something production-grade." - Anuradha Weeraman
The earlier quote might be slightly overblown as some of those complaints, suggestions, and feedback can be iterated on more quickly thanks to AI. However, I think you will find that the overall premise is sound: The feedback loop is where you will spend the vast majority of your time and no coding agent can speed that up. Code was never the real bottleneck. A full-day coding session now being a 15 minute coding session helps, every so slightly, but when you still need to spend weeks talking to the users to figure out what needs to be done in that day/15 minutes, shaving off a handful of hours relative to weeks remains but a drop in the bucket. The marginal improvement is barely worth recognizing.
(please use your words to construct a full argument)
Only if you assume that progress is entirely one-dimensional and there are never any trade-offs. We know both those assumptions are incorrect.
An extreme example: leaping out of my office window gets me down to the ground much faster than taking the stairs. Because of recovery time, it does not at all speed my journey home from work.