Author here. I've been trying out ChatGPT for coding the last few weeks and while I don't think it will replace programmers, I hope it will help us work at a different level of abstraction, maybe even reducing the need for design patterns (my personal pet peeve).

I mostly agree with you regarding whack-a-mole. Indeed you have to be expert already in order to use it, due to the need to verify.

But super interesting idea about the design patterns. I hope it goes the other way around, in the sense that it learns the good code only, and since we use it often, it generates optimized code for being read and understood. Like you mention! So all future code will be delightful and pleasure to read ^^