> What about me ...

While I can see that you feel very passionately about this, the reality is that it's the majority experience that will dictate adoption.

There may never be published research on productivity -- blinding in this instance is impossible, so I don't know how you'd ever do fully-controlled behavioural studies that carried any weight. It doesn't matter. If enough of us decide that LLMs are useful to us, then this form of coding will become the norm.

If that ends up causing more harm than good, then eventually there will be a course correction. But for now, for enough people that matter, LLMs are at least giving the perception of productivity increases. And our decisions and choices come down to the perception of reality, not reality itself (for better or worse).

So I think it's far more useful to take a pragmatic approach, as per TFA. Accept that LLMs have issues, but also bring advantages, and that LLM use in coding is here to stay. What we can do is remain aware of the bad, and make better use of the good.

As for you, personally ... if you mentally cannot deal with LLM output, then I think you have two choices. You can either learn to author system prompts, so that LLM output better fits your needs and no longer triggers you; or you can sit more and more on the outer, raging against the machine while the world changes around you.

Eventually, you'll be like a master craftsman in an era of mass-production. But that's potentially highly valuable in niche markets (consider a watchmaker working in Glashutte, for example), so you may yet win from this. Remember that every day, LLMs are making your own coding skills and knowledge more elite and therefore lucrative, sit back, and smile.