> I'm so conflicted about this. I do love being able to create and bring ideas to life at the light of speed. But I also see the unique value in the experience of coding, deeply caring about the craft. Can we have both?

Yes, but only if you're very wealthy.

As always, everyone else can suck it.

I think it's like any other craft. Buildings and most furniture are built using mass produced lumber and machinery, but many people still enjoy doing woodworking by hand.

Yes, but it may be hard to justify the "experience of coding" from a commercial standpoint.

Casey Muratori had a take on a podcast that I liked comparing writing code vs. using an LLM to generate code to playing guitar by hand vs. playing digital music. Although it's arguably more efficient to play an mp3, people still enjoy the art of playing the guitar.

No.

If the client cares for your craftsmanship.

You can have both, but there are very few people who care about it purely as a craft. They want pay, recognition, etc along with it.

As a hobby you can’t live from

Yes, choose both or choose one of them and, for god's sake, STFU and make something!