I think many people derive joy from hobbies because they get a unique skill as a result of time invested. If the Philadelphia marathon started giving out medals to people who drive the course in a car, I think less people would want to run it.

I agree, but they would move on to another marathon that didn’t hand out prizes to drivers.

People who continue to do the hobby without LLMs will still get unique skills, like woodworkers who don’t use power tools.

I understand that this is a loss for those who were pursuing programming as a hobby only as long as it gave them a unique skill and made them feel superior to others. However, for better or worse, I can’t bring myself to care about that.