AFAICT, it comes down to people who enjoy the outcome vs people who enjoy the craft. Some people just love programming, and it doesn't matter what they're coding, making little virtual machines gives them joy. You (and I) are more outcome driven.
For one, I think there's a sense of unfairness that people are expressing as well. A skill that took considerable time to learn and build up can be reproduced with a machine and that just feels unfair. Another, is obviously companies mandating employees use AI in their work. And then there's the environmental cost in training. Then there are the cases where it's being just for slop or submitting PRs that have not even been reviewed by their creator.
In my opinion, all of these factors make people refuse to see that some of us actually do find use for these tools and that we're not vibe-coding everything in some mad rush to ship trash.
I love creation and creating computer software. A vision appears in my head for a software idea and I have to build it, I am utterly compelled.
So I had to learn to program. I quite like programming it’s good to feel clever.
But my deepest joy is creating and it’s like a gift from heaven to get LLMs that can help me realize even my most ambitious creative visions.
It’s the outcome I want, not the experience of getting there.
I absolutely love what LLMs have brought to programming - accelerated creation.