I think both of you are correct.

LLMs do empower you (and by "you" I mean the reader or any other person from now on) to actually complete projects you need in the very limited free time and have available. Manually coding the same could take months (I'm speaking from experience developing a personal project for about 3 hours every Friday and there's still much to be done). In a professional context, you're being paid to ship and AI can help you grow an idea to an MVP and then to a full implementation in record-breaking time. At the end of the day, you're satisfied because you built something useful and helped your company. You probably also used your problem solving skills.

Programming is also a hobby though. The whole process matters too. I'm one of the people who feels incredible joy when achieving a goal, knowing that I completed every step in the process with my own knowledge and skills. I know that I went from an idea to a complete design based on everything I know and probably learned a few new things too. I typed the variable names, I worked hard on the project for a long time and I'm finally seeing the fruits of my effort. I proudly share it with other people who may need the same and can attest its high quality (or low quality if it was a stupid script I hastily threw together, but anyway sharing is caring —the point is that I actually know what I've written).

The experience of writing that same code with an LLM will leave you feeling a bit empty. You're happy with the result: it does everything you wanted and you can easily extend it when you feel like it. But you didn't write the code, someone else did. You just reviewed an intern's work and gave feedback. Sometimes that's indeed what you want. You may need a tool for your job or your daily life, but you aren't too interested in the internals. AI is truly great for that.

I can't reach a better conclusion than the parent comment, everyone is unique and enjoys coding in a different way. You should always find a chance to code the way you want, it'll help maintain your self-esteem and make your life interesting. Don't be afraid of new technologies where they can help you though.