Seems to me this would get easier or harder depending on how you write the code. Like if you write the code in something standard and unchanging like POSIX shell scripts or C99 or ES5 javascript, at least the ecosystem won't change out from under you. If you use rust or python or a bunch of node.js dependencies then you might have to edit the project just to keep up with ecosystem changes.

yeah I had this happen to me. Except when I go to maintain it, now cursor/claude are good enough to essentially handle it on their own, so it turns out to be very low effort to maintain.

Maybe? I ran across an old pre-LLM project of mine recently, and past me was an asshole and didn't leave a readme for future me. Meanwhile post-LLM projects at least have a readme that the LLM generated for me or my agent to read and pick up context on. Being able to ask an agent what is this repo, what's going on here? Hey just make it do this, instead of toilsomely digging in and doing it tmmyself, seems to say that might not come to pass.

There is, of course, the question of if that's making me dumber. It might be, but there are other brain training things I'm doing outside of that to force my brain to do the thing.

alternatively, you might end up in 'good enough heaven' and not have to touch it for a decade because, you know, it does exactly as you need and you're not google, microsoft, openAI or antrhopic.

I'd bet there's far more 'good enoughs' than anything else out there. One of the reasons microsoft office is constantly churning subscription, etc is because they solved good enough decades ago and need to justify valuations that just don't matter for most of their user's use cases.

Not everyone is a software developer having to churn out the 101th SaaS that's just because some MBA refuses to hire a dev.