Interesting point - syntax sugar was nice when writing code by hand. Now we'd be fine if no such sugar was added anymore ever again.

Syntax sugar still matters if you need to review the code. It was always about reading, not writing. Actually macros are even more powerful with LLMs. Metaprogramming has always been difficult for many (most?) programmers, but LLMs have no issue with it, and it's mostly doing the kinds of manipulations where as long as it compiles, it's correct, so you don't really need to review it in the same way.