It's this, but 1000 times faster — that's the difference. It's sending a noob away to follow your exact instructions and getting results back in 10 seconds instead of 10 hours.

I don't have to worry about managing the noob's emotions or their availability, I can tell the LLM to try 3 different approaches and it only takes a few minutes... I can get mad at it and say "fuck it I'll do this part myself", the LLM doesn't have to be reminded of our workflow or formatting (I just tell the LLM once)

I can tell it that I see a code smell and it will usually have an idea of what I'm talking about and attempt to correct, little explanation needed

The LLM can also: do tons of research in a short amount of time, traverse the codebase and answer questions for me, etc

it's a noob savant

It's no replacement for a competent person, but it's a very useful assistant