Let’s be honest about what’s at stake here. Many of us don’t just write code - we love writing code. Our identity is woven into every elegant solution we craft, every test we make pass, every problem we solve through pure logic and creativity. It’s not just work, not just a craft - it’s who we are.

Think about those moments of deep satisfaction: when you finally track down that elusive bug that’s been haunting production, when you work out how to optimise that slow algorithm and watch response times drop from seconds to milliseconds, when you transform a maze of legacy code into something clean and maintainable. These aren’t just achievements - they’re expressions of who we are as engineers. They’re the moments that remind us why we chose this path.

Now imagine AI taking over these moments of craftsmanship. The creators of these tools paint an optimistic picture - they say we’ll spend more time on defining intent, high-level architecture, and systems thinking. But listen carefully to what they’re really saying: we’ll become overseers rather than creators, managers rather than builders.