I can't speak for anyone else, but I find AI to be very effective. It can do nearly all coding tasks many OOMs faster than I can. And I'm able to get it to produce high-quality code in the process. Using AI, our codebase actually has less tech debt than any time I can remember. I would be less effective if I wasn't using AI and if I wasn't finding new ways to leverage it.

That doesn't mean I enjoy it using AI. I loved coding. I was really good at it! I spent decades honing my abilities, and while some of those skills are still applicable when working with AI, many are not.

I want my company to be successful, so I work as effectively as I can. Unfortunately, the most effective method of working no longer scratches the creative/craftsman itch that it used to.

Right now I'm mitigating it by taking up creative writing in the evenings. That's difficult and creative in a way that coding used to be. Identifying and solving character and story problems feels like debugging and designing used to. Learning to craft effective prose feels like it used to when I was picking up a new programming language and learning its idioms.