Doing things by hand is part of the learning process. Sure, you can prompt an AI to one-shot a 3D open world game, but you'll learn nothing about programming, computer graphics, or game design. That domain knowledge makes you more effective with the AI tools when you choose to use them. What you're saying might apply to experienced engineers, but not a high school kid learning the craft for the first time.

And yes, there will be people who have no interest in learning and just want to manage the AI to do everything for them. I remain skeptical that (manager + AI) will beat (domain expert + AI). It's possible that the relevant kinds of expertise will evolve, but I'm betting on some form of expertise remaining relevant for a long time.

My friend and I were in the car the other day and I remarked on the same thing.

Historically engineers and artists were two different kinds of people, often making fun of each other, especially the former of the latter because of the "starving artist" meme.

But what I've realised since is that engineers are now realising that we were artists all along.

And now there's a division in our ranks, those who use tools to get the job done and those who enjoy the process of writing all their code by hand, aka their art.

I can appreciate both, but I'm not going to pretend that I'd waste time in a business environment doing the latter when I should be doing the former. My friend only wants to do the latter and said he'd change careers if it gets too bad.

There are commits from before 2020 even and the project clearly marks "pre-ai" development too. If you look for it on the web you find the first postings about it in 2020 already too.

this seems to be a bit contrarian?

> The product is the product.

What is the product made of? Code. If it's dogshit code, it's a dogshit product. So too with every "one-shot" 3D game Codex might spit out for you. It can make something that appears impressive the first time you look at it, but that nobody would ever play for more than 5 minutes because the facade falls over the moment it comes into contact with reality.