The "code was never the hard part" is a narrative pushed strongly by designers, MBA guys and product managers. Even before AI, they've always treated programmers like low-lives, someone beneath them and completely replaceable like commodity. Ironically, of this entire group, it isn't programmers that are being replaced left and right. Whole product teams, designers are being replaced. Good coders are still in demand - because, someone has to fix the vibe coded mess. In design, there is no reference for good and bad. You either like a design or not. In code, something either works or not. That's why it's always hard to replace a programmer as opposed to a designer.

Has Claude code et al replaced programmers? Not really. And it will be a long time before it can - because someone needs to still instruct the direction of the code, the base architecture to build upon and that comes with real human experience.