Are there certain core beliefs of generative grammar that are fatally undermined by the recent successes of LLMs and the unsupervised learning that trains them? Do LLMs then constitute a rival (and superior) ‘theory´ that can and should take over now from (all) previous theories in pushing the science forward? This short article has been commissioned as a response to a target article by Cristiano Chesi in the Italian Journal of Linguistics called `Is it the end of (generative) linguistics as we know it?’ In it, I argue that the answer to both these questions is No. On the positive side, I make an urgent case for maintaining theory at the centre of the new era of linguistic science, and for generative grammar to expand its energies into theorizing the link between competence and various aspects of performance in order to shore up its claims to explanatory adequacy.