assuming you yourself had programmed pre-LLM i completely fail to relate to your lived experience. what a devastatingly sad way of viewing the world

setting aside the craft and mastery or satisfaction in goal accomplishment: to me the main thing is a sense of actualization, of the codebase or thing you were working on being better because you were there.

have you ever put up a shelf? did it feel good after?

Putting a shelf up is not fun. Designing, building the shelf from scratch with my own vision feels way better ;). It's a lot more of a hassle but you will always look at it and be like I did that, heck you might have even learn a whole bunch doing that as well. It's easy to go to the store, buy something and assemble it (automation).

I think this perspective comes from assuming that the LLM is doing the thinking for you. And that is not the right approach IMO. The code is still mine - I chose how to write it, reviewed changes, suggested improvements, picked the architecture, directed refactoring and benchmarking efforts, tooling, scope of tests, and so on. It feels quite similar to being a project lead.