I think there's a lot of reason to what you are saying. The 4-5 amount of time to make the codebase readable resonates.
If i really wanted to go 100% LLM as a challenge I think I'd compartmentalize a lot and maybe rely on OpenAPI and other API description languages to reduce the complexity of what the LLM has to deal with when working on its current "compartment" (i.e the frontend or backend). Claude.md also helps a lot.
I do believe in some time saving, but at the same time, almost every line of code I write usually requires some deliberate thought, and if the LLM makes that thought, I often have to correct it. If i use English to explain exactly what I want it is some times ok, but then that is basically the same effort. At least that's my empirical experience.
> almost every line of code I write usually requires some deliberate though
That's probably the worst case for trying to use a LLM for coding.
A lot of the code it'll produce will be incorrect on the first try - so to avoid sitting through iterations of absolute garbage you want the LLM to be able to compile the code. I typically provide a makefile which compiles the code, and then runs a linter with a strict ruleset and warnings set to error, and allow it to run make without prompting - so the first version I get to see compiles, and doesn't cause lint to have a stroke.
Then I typically make it write tests, and include the tests in the build process - for "hey, add tests to this codebase" the LLM is performing no worse than your average cheap code monkey.
Both with the linter and with the tests you'll still need to check what it's doing, though - just like the cheap code monkey it may disable lint on specific lines of code with comments like "the linter is wrong", or may create stub tests - or even disable tests, and then claim the tests were always failing, and it wasn't due to the new code it wrote.
If i really wanted to go 100% LLM as a challenge I think I'd compartmentalize a lot and maybe rely on OpenAPI and other API description languages to reduce the complexity of what the LLM has to deal with when working on its current "compartment" (i.e the frontend or backend). Claude.md also helps a lot.
I do believe in some time saving, but at the same time, almost every line of code I write usually requires some deliberate thought, and if the LLM makes that thought, I often have to correct it. If i use English to explain exactly what I want it is some times ok, but then that is basically the same effort. At least that's my empirical experience.