> But as an counterexample, do we need to hold machine code or assembly, generated from our C or Golang programs, in our heads?

No, the source is enough, because the low-level assembly is translated from the high-level source descriptions (a sound programming language with a complete and consistent specification) via a deterministic algorithmic translation process (a compiler) to a low-level executable that can run on a machine. Today, compilers are complex, but still human understandable. The programs are equivalent, and we're getting better able to actually prove this.

This is why I bristle when people say "post your prompts". Your prompts are not a program and the magic box is not a compiler.

Too many people abandoning everything, either due to laziness, mental overload, or..."skill issues".

I still want to see code. I want write code, check code, optimize and refactor code. I don't want to spend a lot of time debugging, but maybe a little.

The clankers should be accelerating the parts of the process we are bad at, and that takes time we won't spend: long, time-consuming refactors, debugging deep issues, writing crap tons of tests, investigating performance issues, digesting other people's code.

AI should be more like a bicycle than a cruise ship. And I mean the "bicycle for the mind" that Jobs wanted.

100% agreed on this, as Quentin Adam, the CEO of CleverCloud stated : "AI is inhuman so we must give it inhuman tasks".