Wait until you learn that most people's writing skills are that of below LLMs, so it's an actual tangible improvement (as long as you review the output for details not being missed, of course)
Speaking of things that are only real in your mind...
Am I outraged?
And yes, there absolutely was a vocal group of a certain type of programmer complaining about high level languages like C and their risks and inefficiency and lack of control insisting that real programmers wrote code in assembly. It's hard to find references because google sucks these days and I'm not really willing to put in the effort.
Have you not noticed that the story you reference is so well know because... literally every single developer thinks people like Mel are crazy?
Mel or Terry Adams are the exception to the rule... Having that image of greybeards only come if you have never worked with one in real life, sorry you are biased.