Yeah, dude. In the 30 years I've spent writing code and building shit from scratch, I've always described myself as a mechanic or a plumber. Not a "founder" or a "SWE" like most of the dumbfucks around here. (Last I checked, engineering was a white collar job requiring a degree, while writing React was closer to using your hand to unclog a toilet -- so don't fucking call yourself an engineer). Knowing how to make shit and fix it is a blue collar job, whether that's rebuilding a motor or writing a SQL query, and if there's a bit of creative artisanship in what you're tasked with, then you're lucky. Even if part of my job was to create actual art or UX to go along with the code I was writing, I'm, at best, the kind of mechanic who takes the wheels off, takes the dash off, strips the paint off, takes your car down to bare metal, and puts it back together with a new motor looking brand new. With a good bit of pride.

Nothing about code is not blue collar if you actually code for a living. Unless you have visions of grandeur. And the truth is, no founder actually codes for very long. They never did. The managers and the business school graduates don't, either. Their job is to fool people into giving them money, and tell other people what to do; not to know how to make anything. They're white collar; they're parasites.

Three decades of those dumb fucks have gone by, plus the wave of idiots trading NFTs, plus the wave of idiots using AI. Craft code, use your brain, make it right, and it will be a representation of your thought process. In the service of a business. And it is a good job, and it is a blue collar job. Because to the business you're working for? If you're doing your job right, you're a plumber, or a general contractor.

TL;DR, coding has always been a blue collar job, to those who code as mechanics to make and fix things. But long live us: We make things, and the business class is basically helpless without us. LLMs or not; they're pathetically incapable of doing anything technical for themselves.