I have landed here myself. I have always enjoyed writing code, but I find lately that I am getting so much more satisfaction from the process of exploring and designing systems more, and code is simply the substrate.

I am becoming a better architect with AI, because I am spending more mental energy in that lane, getting less embroiled in the nitty-gritty of the code.

There was a thread[1] about this the other day! People have different goals, motivations, and reasons for developing. I guess I just like sorting colored blocks. I'll agonize over the code... I really will go back to a class I wrote months ago and ask "Do I really need this member variable?" and "Does this really need to go on the heap or can it live on the stack and be automatically cleaned up?" "Can I use a pImpl C++ pattern here and reduce the number of headers that this header file includes?"

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48316056

I had that the first few months, but that feeling doesnt stay forever. I think a difficulty with that discussion is that some are still in the honeymoon stage, while others are at the “wtf is the point” stage of the relationship with coding harnesses. In my case that took ~1y from using tools like Claude code daily to the point where I lost interest and motivation once I understood the technology contributed negatively to my personal growth.