I'm just slightly younger than you, but have the exact same sentiment. Hell, even moreso maybe, because what I realized is that "writing code to implement interesting ideas" is not really what I enjoy - it's coming up with the interesting ideas and experimenting with them. I couldn't care less about writing the code - and I only did it because I had to...if I wanted to see my idea come to life.

AI has also been a really good brainstorming partner - especially if you prompt it to disable sycophancy. It will tell you straight up when you are over-engineering something.

It's also wonderful at debugging.

So I just talk to my computer, brainstorm architectures and approaches, create a spec, then let it implement it. If it was a bad idea, we iterate. The iteration loop is so fast that it doesn't matter.

Did you end up regretting a design choice, but normally you'd live with it because so much code would have to be changed? Not with Agentic coding tools - they are great at implementing changes throughout the entire codebase.

And its so easy to branch out to technologies you're not an expert in, and still be really effective as you gain that expertise.

I honestly couldn't be happier than I am right now. And the tools get better every week, sometimes a couple times a week.