I used to work part-time in a restaurant. There was a lot to learn and move my hands and feet at the same time. Mixing ingredients, carrying plates, remembering recipes. It was really difficult and at the time the girl staff laughed at me and bullied me. It is a funny story now.
I still look at McDonald's and think that's a job of considerable difficulty. It's called a 'McJob' and is sometimes taken lightly, as if anyone can do it and it has no future, But in reality, it's a job where the human body, memory and emotions are all involved.
On the other hand, what about engineering jobs today? I feel that it is no longer a **mac job**. I am proud of my job. But in reality, machines do 90% of the work, And humans are just the "link" between the two. Instead of writing code by hand, I type prompts with my mouth. They look at the screen and stick instructions on it like glue. It is no longer manual work, but more like a voice input ritual.
In the days of connecting APIs and libraries, you still had your own will. But with AI coding today, even that level of abstraction is being taken away. The speed of Cursor, Codex and Claude Code makes this clear. The human hand is not even in the playing field anymore.
So I think. **Don't fight.** The more you try to beat AI, the more your self-efficacy is eroded. If you want to continue engineering, you need to keep work and hobby separate. Keep the "joy of making" outside of work.
Still, I remember the time I spent working with my hands in that restaurant. The sensations of 'mixing', 'carrying', 'rushing' - that was more like it, I feel like it was a much more human job.