I feel like one of the things that's not said enough, and which I think is conflating the effectiveness of AI in the eyes of actual software engineers, is that, for the most part, most code produced IS lousy. The craft of programming has been watered down so much in favor of results, and so much code is disposable or write-and-use once, that quality just became less relevant.

I remember when I first started out programming 20 years ago, there was time to craft good quality code. Then there were more and more pushes to get more code out faster, and no one really cared about the quality. Bugs became part of the cost of doing business. I think GenAI for code fits well in the more recent paradigm, and comparing it with hand-crafted code of yore is a bit disingenuous, as appealing as it may be, because most code hasn't been that good for a long time.

I am sad to admit it, but AI is just fitting in where poor coding practices have already existed, and flourishing in that local maxima.