I think this is a two things can be true situation, where our colloquial meaning of coding is not quite adequate to indicate the full range of criteria that really matter, but also, that criteria as a totality (maintainability, reliability etc) is something that can also be targeted and optimized for.

This reminds me a bit of a PhD Comics webcomic that confidently claimed we would "never" cure cancer, on the grounds that cancer is not one thing. And I don't know that we will ever actually cure cancer, but that wouldn't be the reason. Correctly noting the problem space is bigger than a layperson would initially appreciate is a lot of things, most of them helpful, but the one thing it's not is a formal a demonstration of optimizing against the problem space as a whole.