Programming is an art. It's less like fine art or music and closer to architecture or carpentry – combining form and function – but it is an art. If you don't believe me, consider code reviews. I've definitely done code reviews where I admired the mastery on display, where the elegance of the solution shone…

Read the Tea Leaves

A reflection on how AI coding agents are transforming programming from a craft into an assembly-line process. The author argues that LLMs have resolved the tension between code-as-art and code-as-function firmly in favor of function, shifting developer focus from low-level elegance to high-level architecture. The post encourages developers to seek artistic fulfillment outside of coding — through painting, music, dance, or fiction — as the human touch diminishes in software creation. It closes with the observation that we're in a 'fast-fashion era' of coding: software is vibe-coded, used, and discarded.

The diminished art of coding

I feel the pain in what you are talking about as well, i actually even wrote my own article about it.
I think shifting the focus as a dev to actually owning and perfecting the outcomes, seeing development with AI also as a craft or even a form of art and good QA work can bring a lot of the joy the job once had back. (Okay maybe QA for many not so much, i particularly enjoy it but i know that many people do not)
Also i never saw my work as art but now that i thought about it: Code is an expression of ones self so i guess calling it art is actually pretty fair.

This started way back, when frameworks got standarized, that’s when hell let loose.