When that depth erodes, you don't just lose "nice" code. You lose the ability to maintain it, extend it, or even know when something has gone wrong.
A few of us have been thinking about this and put together the Agile Vibe Coding Manifesto (https://agilevibecoding.org) — an attempt to extend the original Agile Manifesto for environments where AI is doing significant amounts of the generating. One of its core principles: "Generated systems remain understandable and maintainable by humans, regardless of how they were produced."
The manifesto isn't a rejection of AI tools — it's an argument that the disciplines of craftsmanship (traceability, domain clarity, human accountability) matter even more in an AI-assisted world, not less. Worth a read if this resonates.
LLMs are freeing companies to produce faster, but your expertise is still needed to supervise them for now.
coding in your spare time as a passion project is likely the outcome for many engineers who like the craft.
you might go as far as separating environments, or even whole machines, for your passion. keep a machine with NO ai options available to push you to code solutions by hand, etc.
almost like deliberately creating a space where the struggle is allowed to exist again.
the challenge though would be finding out time for my passion. if i'm not able to do that then only i am the one to blame
