[nchmy]

One of their primary gripes seems to be that coding via AI is not deterministic - what you get is somewhat up to chance.

But how is this any different from delegating to someone else? They're not going to produce precisely what you told them to.

In either case, you can quite obviously reduce the variability by writing better prompts/instruction, using specs, tests etc... And, likewise, you are going to need to iterate anyway.

The problem, in either case, is when you don't give good instructions, don't carefully review, etc.

So, one might say that a defining characteristic of a proper "engineer" - be it software or otherwise - is conscientiousness. If you combine that with creativity, communication skills, determination, etc then you can produce good results.