I don’t know what is Altman’s experience, but almost nobody writes software character by character for many years. Context code completion is present for about 30 years already (take a look at Delphi or VS6 from 90ties). Refactoring tooling is about 20 years old too (see Eclipse or other Java IDEs). So if he says character by character, it is just silly. When you write prompt you also write is char-by-char right? :).
I don’t know what is Altman’s experience, but almost nobody writes software character by character for many years. Context code completion is present for about 30 years already (take a look at Delphi or VS6 from 90ties). Refactoring tooling is about 20 years old too (see Eclipse or other Java IDEs). So if he says character by character, it is just silly. When you write prompt you also write is char-by-char right? :).