I'm a veteran professional programmer with 40+ years of experience. So far, I'm finding coding with an AI to be pure sweetness and light.

I cannot imagine why you cannot find flow using an AI assistant. I am definitely somebody who finds bliss in programming; and in my experience, AI assistants increase my bliss. My ideas are expressed in code much more efficiently. I spend less time in miserable documentation sets. I find myself fearlessly adding functionality that I would not have added if I weren't using an AI. And I have not a shadow of a doubt that my productivity has gone up dramatically. If anything, I find that AI assistants keep me in flow sate, particularly in cases where I would previously have had to wade through pages of ancient crusty Unix API documentation.

Maybe you should try a different AI. I found the ChatGPT AIs totally unhelpful, and counter-productive; but would recommend Claude Sonnet 3.7 without hesitation. I'm still working my way through other AIs. Others may be better at present, but so far I haven't found any that are dramatically better. It's hard to keep up with the furious pace of innovation.

It might also take a while to find your fu. I found the benefits to using an AI pretty much immediately; but I'm still discovering new and interesting ways to use my AI assistant.