> It does feel a bit like building on quicksand

that's a good analogy and puts into words the way i've always felt about software development. Every so often the entire industry rolls over into something new. I've been here 30 years now and, in my experience, the skill that counts is being able learn new skills. To go back to the analogy, to build something new on top of what you've built in the past before everything is swallowed by the quicksand.

I used to find joy in knowing how things worked inside-out. Whether it was Postgres, or browser engines, or some detail about compilers... I used to find joy in developing the little techniques that made programming NOT building on quicksand. There was satisfation in what you had done being robust.

Pardon my lack of creativity but I'm not even sure what mastery with the new tools (LLMs) would look like. When you are so abstracted from the details and don't have to know anything, what _is_ mastery? (I am not asking rhetorically and if people have overcome this thought I would be interested in hearing from them.)

Knowing how to ask a machine questions in the right way? Playing as a manager in control of non-human developers? It all sounds really silly and something that is difficult to aspire to (and I can't imagine explaining my job to others with a straight face). I think I find it even more egregious because it's all built on paying rent to the LLM operators.

It's not that I don't enjoy results in their own right sometimes but I think I am definitely in the 'this is giving me an identity crisis' camp.

Did a tailor gain mastery of the sweatshop machine? Did mastery of the automated sewing machines give the same joy to the tailor or was it mind numbing meaningless activity that he would be happier to be free of.