I see your point but I'm not sure there is much more to say on the matter: apart from having fun, learning stuff and taking pride in your work, what other reasons do you see for "doing things the hard way"? You could argue that it makes you more competitive because you'll be better at babysitting a coding agent, but this feels less and less true with every new model. Unless you're seeing something else to take into account here?

> Frankly, I was hoping for a deeper, more interesting conclusion.

Pretty much this. There was a lot of build up in the first paragraphs, only to conclude something that, at least in my view, is remarkably uninteresting.