Sure, you don't know the code by heart, but people debugging code translated to assembly already do that.
The big difference is being able to unleash scripts that invalidate enormous amount of hypothesis very fast and that can analyze the data.
Used to do that by hand it took hours, so it would be a last resort approach. Now that's very cheap, so validating many hypothesis is way cheaper!
I feel like my "debugging ability" in terms of value delivered has gone way up. For skill, it's changing. I cannot tell, but the value i am delivering for debugging sessions has gone way up
But if you don't and there's no PR process (side projects), the motivation to form that connection is quite low.
No, because you can get LLMs to produce high quality code that has gone through an infinite number of refinement/polish cycles and is far more exhaustive than the code you would have written yourself.
Once you hit that point, you find yourself in a directional/steering position divorced from the code since no matter what direction you take, you'll get high quality code.