I think you've misread the article, specifically the purpose of the Brooks quotes. They're clearly not to denigrate anyone for wanting a more useful or convenient way of generating software--they're specifically about the "LLMs will obliterate software engineering as a profession" claims put forth by many LLM marketers. In fact, Brooks is never once mentioned in the "Power to the people?" section of the essay.

Generally, the whole point of the "Power to the people?" (and to some extent the "On being left behind") section(s) is to underscore the two antithetical claims made by many LLM marketers: 1. LLMs are so powerful and so natural and easy that someone with no experience can create amazing software, and 2. LLM usage is a core skill, one that if you don't begin training now you'll be left behind.

Obviously, both of these can't be simultaneously 100% true--either it's easy enough for the non-programming layperson to successfully generate software for an intentional purpose, or, LLM assisted programming is a skill you need to train to avoid professional obsolescence in modern society. So, the article disagrees with the majority of both claims, and accepts a weakened/minor portion of each: 1. LLM output is easy to generate but accurate prompting matters, and 2. when used for software development professionally, some amount of skilled human intervention does indeed seem necessary. And now these two claims do align.

However, if professional software engineers who work with and read code constantly, armed with the best software practices to aid LLMs we can determine, cannot use modern AI tools without shooting their feet off at relatively frequent rates, certainly you'd expect the layperson who must put an even greater amount of undue faith in the validity of the results to be at extremely high-risk of foot-shooting. It's not "gatekeeping" to forewarn people against unwarranted trust in LLM output, nor is it "gatekeeping" to suggest that modern tech communicators/marketers describing an overly flowery LLM tooling landscape might be doing people a disservice.