I think the bigger issue in defining this is that “programming” is too big a task to say whether it got easier or harder.
Some YAML formalities now take zero effort while architectural thinking became way more important and difficult.
Some YAML formalities now take zero effort while architectural thinking became way more important and difficult.
Did it though? I think the architectural stuff was always there and was always hard. And still is. I don't buy that it got harder now that you've got a pretty smart AI you can bounce ideas off, ask to investigate stuff, maybe make a quick mockup trivial test of both options on an architectural choice you face, send off to do research etc.
...so in my mind the aggregate {{programming}} got easier because the hard parts are still hard and the trivial parts got AI'd.
The only step up in complexity imo is wrangling a bunch of agents. Even very good coders report mental exhaustion from that
And I also think what you describe is true in some contexts where you know exactly what you’re after.
You also don’t make architecture decisions in a vacuum, so the decision others make also affect you and you need to sell your decisions to others.
Previously, I would've only thought through the really important high level choices up front (e.g. things that would affect interfaces with other parts of the system, or 'do I need a queue here' etc). For the smaller minutiae of good code structure, appropriate abstractions etc. I would allow myself flexibility to address those while working through the problem.
I found it easier to work at those different levels of granularity in sequence, and the latter one I specifically found easier to see the problem clearly and make a good decision while hand-writing the diff. In that sense, I think good architecture has been made more difficult to practice. For me, at least.