Comment by sanderjd

This is exactly my take as well!

I do really like programming qua programming, and I relate to a lot of the lamentation I see from people in these threads at the devaluation of this skill.

But there are lots of other things that I also enjoy doing, and these tools are opening up so many opportunities now. I have had tons of ideas for things I want to learn how to do or that I want to build that I have abandoned because I concluded they would require too much time. Not all, but many, of those things are now way easier to do. Tons of things are now under the activation energy to make them worthwhile, which were previously well beyond it.

Just as a very narrow example, I've been taking on a lot more large scale refactorings to make little improvements that I've always wanted to make, but which have not previously been worth the effort, but now are.