I've seen "wild guessing" quite a bit when people don't actually understand the problem they're solving. Mostly students, but it happens in professional contexts as well.

I'm not sure why, maybe people are missing knowledge that would allow them to understand, so they just try random things in the hope that it works? It surprises me every time it happens.

To some that is the same. Try and modify until it sort of works.

I don't think you would be able to solve complex problems or development tasks with such an approach as described above (if that's what you're referring to). That's something i could expect from a bloody junior but not anymore from a seasoned professional.

In combination with ChatGPT4 and alike and lots of iterations, you probably would get pretty far today. But I agree, this is not software engeneering and I would not use such code for anything important. But if someone makes a (sandboxed) game with it, it still might be fun.