I empathize with all of the above, but ive honestly felt that way more or less the moment I went from “programmer” to “founder” (I run a small startup since 2021, so a couple years before “agentic programming”). At some point I accepted this as the cost of working at a higher level of abstraction (and getting more done as a result, whether via a human employee or an LLM doing the work I used to do).

I know older devs that reminisce for the days of programming straight to the metal in assembly (e.g. on DOS or Amiga) and “knowing exactly what the computer is doing” which feels somehow familiar!

Even more familiar are senior devs moving to management (I know this isnt an original metaphor).