I feel this, but I try to stick to a personal rule: new work I typically "spike" with claude to get it to draw a map, and then I do the final implementation by hand, exactly as I want it. Some of the sparkle of the craft is certainly gone. BUT... it is also satisfying to get things done that I would never touch otherwise.
> I love entering “the zone” and solving complex problems, one at a time
This straight away sums up my experience too.. infarct for vscodrive had to even turn off copilot as, to me at least it feels so much more aggressive. It feels like it's trying to assume my intention constantly but auto completing. Like when someone will interrupt my conversation.
Visual studio is getting worse alsoas it will jump ahead of my point of focus and keep updating. This all very quickly becomes something to consider while working and thus prevents getting into the "zone"...
It's not good when trying to solve a problem so I turn it off.if I'm starting a new project and need boilerplate, then sure. The promise is long gone.
For me, it is even more fun.
The boilerplate code that just has to be that way, gets done automatically. Same with chore coding.
Stuff like html/css that im missing one <div> and i dont see it, but AI fixed it. It's not fun looking for it.
Anything I enjoy doing for myself, I can just do.
I can still do fun bug busting. For example recently I had a minor problem in streamlit. AI couldnt figure it out because except BaseException as e had no output. Add traceback and the exception was happening deep inside streamlit.
Mind you, literally my first ever project using streamlit, probably my fault.
Basically all the boring parts of code are now AI. I love it.
AI coding for me seems to turn into AI coding, human testing.
I get enjoyment from two things: 1) solving interesting problems in interesting ways and 2) producing things of value that satisfy some persons needs. The second one is what I get paid for with the first one being only occasionally required. So I do the first one for side projects. Bonus I get to decide what my side projects are. The second one is vastly more productive with AI, and so I like AI.