the rapidly dwindling sanity of valve programmers as expressed through code comments

I've been coding by hand for nearly 20 years. I don't get any rush from generating code with agents. Most of the time I just feel loss. Coding to me has always been the work of a craftsman. I spent years learning syntax, studying APIs, and generally becoming an expert in a language I could then use to exactly express myself. My code became my way of of telling a story. I picked that language not only because it was the right tool for the job, but because I liked the community, I liked the direction of the tool, and I liked writing it. Agents obliterate all of that. Before, source code was like exploring a canyon. Each function, loop, and nested brackets was someone's choice. There was an implicit story to follow. Agentic code is that valley after the glaciers have retreated. A good illustration of what I'm afraid of losing is in those videos cataloging the [the rapidly dwindling sanity of valve programmers as expressed through code comments]( [this video] ). When AI generates your code, you lose that context. You lose that human connection to code that I care so much about. Unfortunately, I don't think the human touch was as high-of-value to other developers as I previously thought. I've realized that for most developers, it was never about the journey, it was about getting to the destination as quickly as possible. We were infected with a plague of idea-guys and didn't even know it. That's okay. There are a billion things in the world where what was once the sole dominion of craf