But that was never the hard part!

Come now.

After twenty plus years as a professional software developer I can name two hard problems, not more. One is related to the article, the other is not:

1. Getting that clear idea out of a stakeholder's brain. Traditionally this would be a specification but doesn't need to be that formal. Remember, remember the first panel of https://i.redd.it/i2aeyrivmjoz.jpg An LLM doesn't help here because it doesn't push back. It'll do whatever you tell it to do even if it's not what you really wanted. The software developer here operates very similarly as a translator and it always has been true a translator who speaks both sides well will be able to do the highest quality work. This is not at all new. It always has been the advice that if you know things like, say, logistics and software or any such pair then you'll be well off financially either because you can do this translation well or because you realize what's missing and can do a product for it.

2. The other problem, of course, is debugging. Since LLMs fundamentally work from a training set any debugging problem not blatantly obvious to a sr developer is hopeless for them.