Programming

As for the minified JavaScript in a typical website, it’s not that different to graphic design where achieving a purpose for a business can come ahead of any priorities related to being art

I guess the main thing I want to get across though is, there's more here than just these two types of motivations, the instrumental business coder and the beauty driven purist, and this isn't just about AI, there are so many potentially ugly tools and practices out there that are widely used anyway. Personally as a hobbyist who doesn't program for money anymore, I'm going to do things the way I want to do them and the main thing I normally want to do is get something working quickly that I can see how the top level concept works in reality before I get lost in the weeds and lose interest. I have (often strong) feelings about the code itself, and really appreciate seeing something done the way I feel it should be, but these are situational. And they are tied to how the code itself serves its purpose. For instance a case where the user cannot or should not have to trust the developer, and so the overwhelming focus of the design is accessible verification of the application's security properties, that's awesome to me. So when the author of the blog post says this:

But there’s another type of person. These are true programmers who write code regardless of income. They write code simply because they can’t help but write it. It doesn’t matter to them how much money they make from it. They might work on open-source projects that will never generate any income for them.

They enjoy writing code, solving development challenges, designing, figuring out the logic, fixing bugs, and understanding the entire system as a whole. They enjoy the process itself. And they’ll never hand that over to AI agents.

I think they are missing some stuff. This can't be reduced to just being about isolated enjoyment of the process. We have a relationship to the software we write and use, and the nature of that relationship matters and has consequences. And caring about that isn't synonymous with use or rejection of any particular tool.