I am a competent self-taught SQL coder, even did a role as a sysadmin temporarily, and I always shared your opinion that if it works it works and that'll do. After working alongside people that had studied and understood the reasons that efficiency is important I realised I was just ignorant because I was seeing things from an end-user point where everything is working fine until it isn't. In a one-person to one-server environment you push your buttons and if it works then great but in a virtual environment with 100s or 1000s of concurrent users then efficiency makes a huge difference.Sure, it may not be as efficient or as clean code, as a guy on 50k a year, spending two months on it, but it can get 90% there with an hour of back and forth, which is basically how my coder mates use it, and they use it for apps, websites, databases etc, they all love it. It's getting better all the time too of course. Clean code or code which is the most efficient as it can be is largely overrated too mind, for the vast majority of uses anyway. No point trying to write the most efficient thing ever and taking 6 months on it, when you could have something functional in a week, and then spend the next 5 months making it better. It's just another very good string to the bow, which when combined with other resources just makes everything better/ more efficient.
I suppose it's best used with a minder, but also opens the door to amateurs to crate basic functional programs with very little experience or knowledge.
Whether it is true AI or not doesn't really matter to most, if it acts like it does etc.
99% of people don't understand how the world works, and they never will, maybe nobody ever has.
A good analogy is simple traffic flow. If you have a 4 lane motorway with a speed limit of 70 and 1 user going 50 then it doesn't matter. The user will travel from a to b. If you have 4 people using it. it still doesn't matter. There are 4 lanes. Put 100 on and those people driving slowly really get in the way.
If you push something out that is good enough to get going and then start fixing problems then you are doing roadworks and we all know what sort of traffic problems they cause. People get much angrier about something not working the way it should than it not being ready yet so it's worth getting it right first time.