One of the recurring tropes that bums me out *so* much about the process of AI sludge devouring software _specifically_ — with practitioners of the craft enthusiastically participating more than the practitioners of any other — is that the *self*-developmental potential of writing software is completely ignored. I couldn't really fit this in to my blog post "Programming Isn’t Special" https://blog.glyph.im/2026/10/programming-isnt-special.html although it touches on many of the same themes, so that's good background for this.