My love died the moment I was paid to build other people's stuff for 40 hours a week.

Now I use programming in support of other tasks and I can't get enough of it. It became fun again, like cooking for myself after quitting as a line cook.

AI feels rather useless to me. It can generate bullshit but it can hardly blaze new trails. It's great for dealing with the tedium, but not for solving problems that require a great deal of context.