The Two Joys of Coding Before AI

There is a particular kind of grief floating around right now. You see it in blog posts, in conference talks, in late-night threads: a mourning for the joy of coding before AI. People describe it as if a forest has been paved over. Something they loved is gone, and something colder has taken its place. I think most of these conversations talk past each other because they skip the only question that matters: what was the joy actually made of? "Coding" is not one activity. It is at least two, braided together so tightly that for decades nobody had to separate them.