alt Hacker NewsWhat people like about code is that you can run it and then it does exactly the things you wrote! And there is a precise, predictable relationship between the code and what it does, which you can fully understand and reason about!
Neither natural-language-writing nor LLM-prompting does give you that.
I think your argument has two facettes:
1. It is great to see an effect of your thoughts, like something happening in the real world. 2. Coding offers a feeling of perfect control due to the deterministic nature of code.
I would argue that 1 is still the case with LLMs, and 2 was always just 95% true, never 100%, because of oversights, bugs in libraries, and what have you.
So what actually decays is maybe not so much the feeling of self-efficacy, but the feeling of control, and even this is a gradual change. Perhaps it would be less unsettling if it didn't happen at the same time as a potential loss of control in other areas: career, salary, mode of working etc.