There's a BIG difference, at least with tools like Claude Code: plan mode. I'm now using Claude Code a lot at at work, and the first thing I do is enter plan mode where I can have a "conversation" asking it explain how it would implement. Just a few back/forth later I end up refining its plan to conform to good (or what I think is "good") design, after which it will tell me exactly what it is going to do (with code diffs), which I sign off on (again, potentially after a few iterations). It's only then that it generates the code.

By contrast, on one project many years ago I was reviewing the code generated by an overseas team, and I couldn't make head or tail of it, it was an absolute tangled mess that was impossible to fix.