> AI changes the job to be a constant struggle with hard problems.
Very true. I think AI (especially Claude Code) forced me to actually think hard about the problem at hand before implementing the solution. And more importantly, write down my thoughts before they fleet away from my feeble mind. A discipline that I wished I had before.
That's strange, I've never thought it can be done this way. Normally I'd read the docs, maybe sketch up some diagrams, then maybe take a walk while thinking on how to solve the problem, and by the time I got back to the screen I'd already have a good idea on how to do it.
These days the only difference is that I feed my ideas to a few different LLMs to have "different opinions". Usually they're crap but sometimes they present something useful that I can implement.