writing code is the actual fun part of the job though.

it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

I disagree. Shipping has always been the fun part for me. I have been a DEEP engineer, and I love figuring out creative and deep optimizations, but writing them was never fun, designing them was. Writing the code has always been the least enjoyable part for me.

I love coding, or rather I love what coding allows me to do which is build and ship. That’s not be saying we abdicate any responsibility and yolo all our code but coding was _always_ a means to an end.

See also debates between high/low level languages.

You might as well say “real men/women only write Asm”.

This is the conflict we've entered. There is a good portion of the engineering population that considers coding fun.

The other side considers shipping as a feature.

I can both sympathize and empathize with this conflict.

To me the system design shit is fun as well, different strokes for different folks!

All those things (coding / distributing / design / whatever) WAS fan to you / us. It was. "The thrill is gone ..."

>writing code is the actual fun part of the job though.

You mean typing the actual code into the editor is the fun part for you? For me, the fun part has always been "cause computer to do novel things", and actually typing/compiling/debugging the code is just a speed bump on the way to something fun.