Yes, writing has always generally been great practice for thinking clearly. It's a shame it isn't more common in the industry⸺I do believe that the norm of lack of practice in it is one of the reasons why we have to deal with so much bullshit code.
The "hammock time thinking" is exactly what a lot of programmers should be doing in the first place⸺you absorb the cost of planning upfront instead of the larger costs of patching up later, but somehow the dominant culture has been to treat thoughtful coding with derision.
It's a real shame that AI beat human programmers at the game of thinking, and perhaps that's a good reason to automate us all out of our jobs.
One problem is that one person’s hammock time is another’s overthinking time and needs the opposite advice. Of course it’s about finding that balance and that’s hard to pin down with words.
But I take your point and the trend definitely seems to be towards quicker action with feedback rather than thinking things through in the first place.
In that sense LLM’s present this interesting middle ground in that it’s a faster cycle than actually writing the code, but still more active and externalising than getting lost in your own thoughts (not withstanding how productive that can still be).