I am a professor and have seen both extremes. I am worrying about how to keep high scholarly standards all the time --- also on teaching, and especially when supervising theses.
I see two extremes: one represented by this professor who IMHO cares too little about students --- still he deserves to keep his job. The other extreme is more dangerous and is about University professors actively accepting and facilitating immature behaviour by students. Where could a sweet spot be drawn along this gradient?
Code that writes code that writes code... my limited experience combining AWK and GAMS gave me impressively powerful feelings about my limited code. This surely belongs to the next level, I'll go for more!
The idea of net positive is flawed, as multiple local net positives from different disruptions (other than cables) might lead to deterioration of global quality thresholds for sensitive issues, e.g. chains of wetlands required for migratory birds. These global connections are most often unwisely accounted.
"I do think we need a mechanism to ensure that reviews are good and high quality. Especially the reject ones." This is a very important point, IMHO more for proposals than for articles. The latter deserving less time because time is at a premium, although I am aware that this is a most painful truth!
We all get papers rejected. Nobel prizes get also papers rejected. And rejection is one of the very few tools we have to stop the crap from flowing in. This is not to say that all rejected papers are crap. Sorry to hear about your bad time with rejections, this is a universal thing.