It's not the same example, the excavator is driven by a human being, it's a tool (in coding world the same as using an high level programming language instead of writing bits into the computer memory).

The LLM *may* be used as a mere tool, that is something you ask question time to time, but shouldn't be the thing that makes the work that you should do. Because if we arrive at this point (hopefully never) at that point the CEO of the tech companies may as well say, why we still need developers? Let's fire all of them.

Fortunately they did not, because there is STILL VALUE in writing code by hand, understanding what it happens, what the code will do, etc. I hope this will not be a lost skill, or well, if it does good for me, because the same as nowadays things being able to repair electronic devices makes a ton of money (I've considered opening a repair shop) because there is no one still doing it, will do programmers that well, know how to program.

Yes, LLM is a tool. And CEOs of the tech companies are retaining developers not because there is value in writing code by hand, it's because developers can use that tool effectively and responsibly: they can tell bad code from good code, they design the solution, let AI do the hard boring work of coding it out, then these developers check its output, test it, also they can be creative and e.g. ask LLM to review LLM's output, etc etc.

But the need to manually type stuff out arises very infrequently in my experience. It happens but it's an exception, not the rule.