This line of reasoning is smelling pretty "no true Scotsman" to me. I'm sure there were amazing ColdFusion devs, but that hardly justifies the use of the technology. Likewise "This tool works great on the condition that you need to hire a Simon Willison level dev" is almost a fault. I'm pretty confident you could squeeze some juice out of a Markov Chain (ignoring, of course, that decoder-only LLMs are basically fancy MCs).
In a weird way it sort of reminds me of Common Lisp. When I was younger I thought it was the most beautiful language and a shame that it wasn't more widely adopted. After a few decades in the field I've realized it's probably for the best since the average dev would only use it to create elaborate foot guns.
"elaborate foot guns" -- HN is a high signal environment, but I could read for a week and not find a gem like this. Props.
Destiny visits me on my 18th birthday and says, "Gart, your mediocrity will result in a long series of elaborate foot guns. Be humble. You are warned."
Meh, smart high-agency people can write good software, and they can go on to leverage powerful tools in productive ways.
All I see in your post is equivalent to something like: you're surrounded by boot camp coders who write the worst garbage you've ever seen, so now you have doubts for anyone who claims they've written some good shit. Psh, yeah right, you mean a mudball like everyone else?
In that scenario there isn't much a skilled software engineer with different experiences can interject because you've already made your decision, and your decision is based on experiences more visceral than anything they can add.
I do sympathize that you've grown impatient with the tools and the output of those around you instead of cracking that nut.
In a weird way it sort of reminds me of Common Lisp. When I was younger I thought it was the most beautiful language and a shame that it wasn't more widely adopted. After a few decades in the field I've realized it's probably for the best since the average dev would only use it to create elaborate foot guns.