>No, because good understanding of design comes from programming experience.

“Programming” is a bit loaded. Do you mean thinking through and typing everything out yourself?

What design skills specifically can you only develop from continually programming in this way? I fully grant that you need to know how to code yourself to build things with models but what specific ability to use models atrophies alongside your no AI coding abilities?

Personally I’ve found the opposite to be true. As writing out code myself has shrank to nearly 0, I now do way more designing. There is a much shorter feedback loop on design now. You get a lot better at design when thats basically all you are doing, and seeing feedback on your design in minutes rather than weeks or even months.