The excitement over the little wins has largely evaporated. I think this is more of a reflection of what AI has done to the coding process itself. It used to be that you could take pride in relatively little things, like improving the performance of a single function that makes an application more responsive. It didn't necessarily have to be exciting to everyone, but you could feel that satisfaction. Now we really don't even get to have that sort of satisfaction. AI forces us to focus only on the big picture. When people don't feel the satisfaction over their own little wins, it's hard for them to imagine why anyone else would.

HN is still one of my favorite sites, though. Even when I get downvoted, at least it's primarily by people who can understand the subject matter. Every other site has people absolutely talking out their ass, especially when it comes to... ugh... AI.