I agree. In fact, that's precisely one of the hardest parts of programming. Your thinking aligns with mine. I do a lot of equipment programming for factory delivery. I've even delivered an MES system before, to be precise, it was migrating a legacy MES to a modern version.

Beyond hobby projects, most clients often don't really know what they want. And that's generally what we call domain modeling. This is definitely an area where AI is weak. As you know, it mainly pulls from generic patterns.

When there are specific constraints, AI struggles with core business logic. And as you said, it's also weak at choosing the right direction or the goal to pursue. But as you also know, 80% of programming is built on what others have already created. Originality is only about 20%. And in that 80%, AI is absolutely dominant. I agree with you and I've upvoted your comment.

I really like your perspective