Just try to take those same friends who drive everywhere on a (walking) trail hike inside the city, then come back to report.

Your analogy doesn't make very much sense.

Perhaps it would be better to compare somebody who drives a car vs someone who used to drive but now uses Uber.

Writing code seems more like walking to me; at least it is the most manual way of getting a computer program. Horses might be more like one of those low-code/no-code solutions (it really fits, they are useful but very opinionated, so not always cooperative). And, the situation with AI seems a bit worrying for them.

To continue the modified analogy, if your friends lost the ability to walk, you’d be quite worried, right?

"My friends can't reason as well as they used to, they've been using LLMs to do their reasoning for them." is going to be the eventual outcome. What's the point in getting more done if it ruins your mind in the process?