You’re both right. It just depends on the problems you’re solving and the languages you use.

I find languages like JavaScript promote the idea that of “Lego programming” because you’re encouraged to use a module for everything.

But when you start exploring ideas that haven’t been thoroughly explored already, and particularly in systems languages which are less zealous about DRY (don’t repeat yourself) methodologies, the you can feel a lot more like a sculptor.

Likewise if you’re building frameworks rather than reusing them.

So it really depends on the problems you’re solving.

For general day-to-day coding for your average 9-to-5 software engineering job, I can definitely relate to why people might think coding is basically “LEGO engineering”.