But that was a large part of it. When it was difficult to write correct, well-structured code, that was a major determinant in who would get a job as a developer - ability to design and test came second. Now that generating code is automatic, it's the rest that becomes important. That works well for those of us who could do all of those things, but hurts those whose only ability was to generate code.
Maybe 30-40 years ago. For as long as I've been around the basic ability to write good code was secondary to a long list of other skills.
That's different than saying a lot of people *believed* writing code was the hardest/most important part.