> Straw man. Who said this? If anything, the symbolic linguists have been overpromising on this front since the 1980s.

I'm sure I've seen people say this about language translation and playing go. Ditto chess, way back before Kasparov lost. I don't think I've seen anyone so specific as to say that about medical licensing exams, nor as vague as "write code", but on the latter point I do even now see people saying that software engineering is safe forever with various arguments given…

Fair enough. I’m not going to argue nobody said anything. What I’ll contest is that anyone of consequence said it with consequence. These beliefs didn’t slow down the field. They didn’t stop it from raising capital or attracting engineers.