I self-taught myself coding at a young age but I haven't had any identity crisis due to AI. I always saw myself as a software architect, not a coder.

When I was a junior learning to code, I would feel proud of myself because I could remember 100 lines of Windows API code needed to create a new window... But it's been decades since I understood that the real value is not in the code. It's in the architecture. As the author alludes to; the intuition behind the code is what counts.

I think highly competent engineers are often underappreciated because the really clever stuff they do doesn't appear clever at all; it looks deceptively simple. I think what people don't understand is that maintaining simplicity whilst requirements are becoming more complex, is very difficult.