Interestingly, today’s AI coding agents feel much the same way.
Throughout my life, I have dabbled in programming as a utilitarian coder, writing small tools or scripts when needed.
In my web development career, I wrote some small tools from scratch, but I primarily modified other people’s code for my needs.
Since 1990, I’ve programmed in BASIC, C, Visual Basic, PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, Ruby, MUSHcode, and some others.
Creating durable production code, managing a complex project, or crafting something truly novel still requires experience, patience, and skill beyond what today’s AI agents can provide on their own.