but at least as a software engineer, i always knew my work was "never done" and so it was common to build a bunch of code that might be thrown away, either because it didn't serve our customers (the mvp or pilot fails to meet demand), or because we found a better way to do it and so we deprecate it.
some people got too attached to the code and honestly they were the types to be filtered out fast.. way too emotional and hard to work with. getting attached to code meant you actually don't advance (after all, in our case, we were a business serving customers and not a hobby artisan shop). attachment leads one to hold back due to some misplaced cognitive load.
isn't the goal of working on "advancing the field/product/whatever" to always be solving/selling/whatever?
maybe in your hands, with your knowledge and experience over the last 20+ years, you can use AI to make leaps and bounds by steering it properly towards whatever solution or goal?