I use LLMs to support my programming all day, and I'm not "writing prompts all day long". I'm working just like I used to, only faster.

LLMs make it quicker for me to:

- Decipher obscure error messages

- Knock out a quick exploratory prototype of a new idea, both backend and frontend code

- Write boiler plate code against commonly used libraries

- Debug things: feeding a gnarly bug plus my codebase into Gemini (for long context) or o3-mini can save me a TON of frustration

- Research potential options for libraries that might help with a problem

- Refactor - they're so good at refactoring now

- Write tests. Sometimes I'll have the LLM sketch out a bunch of tests that cover branches I may have not bothered to cover otherwise.

I enjoy working like this a whole lot more than I enjoyed working without them, and I enjoyed programming a lot prior to LLMs.

Using LLMs to write code for you is solving problems. The argument is almost like saying "using a third party library is not solving a problem on your own". If it gets the job done, it works.

I enjoy writing code, but I enjoy seeing getting a feature out even more. In fact, I don't quite enjoy the part of writing basic logic or tweaking CSS which an intern can easily do.

I don't think anybody is writing prompts all day long. If you don't actually know how to write code, maybe. But at this point, a professional software engineer still works with a code base with a hands-on approach most of the time, and even heavy LLM users still spend a lot of time hand writing code.

I enjoy building things. Writing code, well, I could take or leave that.