I really enjoyed reading this and I've been thinking along similar lines when I imagine viable careers of the future. No one will care if code is "thick" but why would anyone buy a novel written by AI? What does the reader get out of it? It seems like the humanities might be the most stable career path available.

i’m working on a little ios widget display currently. even a tiny little one view box has hundreds of nuanced design and structure decisions behind it.

That reasoning is the thickness not the amount of code that powers it though they are somewhat interrelated.