I agree completely. Personally, I think the art of programming was lost the moment we started using human-readable languages.

Some people see coding as simply getting a problem solved, and aren't interested in how the CPU actually does it. Others appreciate the craft of painstakingly arranging machine instructions, understanding every register and every clock cycle, and knowing they're solving problems that not just anyone can.

For us, that's where the sense of worth and accomplishment comes from. Using a high-level language to have a compiler do all the interesting work rather misses the point.

But I don't fault people who use Python, C++, or even assembly. It's just a different way of looking at it.