And I'm not sure about the other either. In my 20+ year career in aerospace software, the most memorable times were solving interesting problems, not days with no struggle just churning out code.
Generally memorable things are different than unmemorable things. Work is unmemorable. Driving is unmemorable except when something negative happens. Waze tries to give some positive feelings to the driving route. Waze knows that people want positive experiences sometimes more than efficiency.
Being stuck in a traffic jam is more memorable than not being so. Or we remember the negative feeling more than the fact that our drive actually wasn't inefficient.
AI tools makes us have a less negative day of work. so we feel like we have no traffic jams. "I got so much done" really means "I didn't get stuck". But it's also removing the positive feelings too!
It's an illusion of progress through our feelings and memories.
Or programming with AI brings different feedback mechanisms and systems and different emotional engagements and different memory behaviours. It's very interesting!
Ai tools makes programming feel easier. That it might be actually less productive is interesting but we humans prefer the easier shortcuts. Our memories of coding with AI tells us that we didn't struggle and therefore we made progress.