It's increasingly a space that is constrained by the tools and integrations. Models provide a lot of raw capability. But with the right tools even the simpler, less capable models become useful.
Mostly we're not trying to win a nobel prize, develop some insanely difficult algorithm, or solve some silly leetcode problem. Instead we're doing relatively simple things. Some of those things are very repetitive as well. Our core job as programmers is automating things that are repetitive. That always was our job. Using AI models to do boring repetitive things is a smart use of time. But it's nothing new. There's a long history of productivity increasing tools that take boring repetitive stuff away. Compilation used to be a manual process that involved creating stacks of punch cards. That's what the first automated compilers produced as output: stacks of punch cards. Producing and stacking punchcards is not a fun job. It's very repetitive work. Compilers used to be people compiling punchcards. Women mostly, actually. Because it was considered relatively low skilled work. Even though it arguably wasn't.
Some people are very unhappy that the easier parts of their job are being automated and they are worried that they get completely automated away completely. That's only true if you exclusively do boring, repetitive, low value work. Then yes, your job is at risk. If your work is a mix of that and some higher value, non repetitive, and more fun stuff to work on, your life could get a lot more interesting. Because you get to automate away all the boring and repetitive stuff and spend more time on the fun stuff. I'm a CTO. I have lots of fun lately. Entire new side projects that I had no time for previously I can now just pull off in a spare few hours.
Ironically, a lot of people currently get the worst of both worlds because they now find themselves baby sitting AIs doing a lot more of the boring repetitive stuff than they would be able to do without that to the point where that is actually all that they do. It's still boring and repetitive. And it should be automated away ultimately. Arguably many years ago actually. The reason so many react projects feel like Ground Hog Day is because they are very repetitive. You need a login screen, and a cookies screen, and a settings screen, etc. Just like the last 50 projects you did. Why are you rebuilding those things from scratch? Manually? These are valid questions to ask yourself if you are a frontend programmer. And now you have AI to do that for you.
Find something fun and valuable to work on and AI gets a lot more fun because it gives you more quality time with the fun stuff. AI is about doing more with less. About raising the ambition level.