In some respects, perhaps in principle they could. But what is the point of handing off the entire process to a machine, even if you could?
If programming is a tool for thinking and modeling, with execution by a machine as a secondary benefit, then outsourcing these things to LLMs contributes nothing to our understanding. By analogy, we do math because we wish to understand the mathematical universe, so to speak, not because we just want some practical result.
To understand, to know, are some of the highest powers of the human person. Machines are useful for helping us enable certain work or alleviate tedium to focus on the important stuff, but handing off understanding and knowledge to a machine (if it were possible, which it isn't) would be one of the most inhuman things you could do.
If programming is a tool for thinking and modeling, with execution by a machine as a secondary benefit, then outsourcing these things to LLMs contributes nothing to our understanding. By analogy, we do math because we wish to understand the mathematical universe, so to speak, not because we just want some practical result.
To understand, to know, are some of the highest powers of the human person. Machines are useful for helping us enable certain work or alleviate tedium to focus on the important stuff, but handing off understanding and knowledge to a machine (if it were possible, which it isn't) would be one of the most inhuman things you could do.