Well we're already in agreement that programming is merely one medium, but with AI being used as a replacement for just about any form of human expression - audiovisual arts, writing, mathematics, information sciences, etc - all mediums are under the same looming threat. So if we're giving up on one medium, we're gonna be giving up on most of them. And without them, we can't really pass on those lessons. Learning doesn't exist in the abstract, we also have to put those lessons into practice. If OP wasn't a programmer but a musician, let's say, then I'd have the same admittedly harsh reaction. I don't see any reason to doompost about the end of programming, or the end of music, or the end of learning.

Finally, I don't really know where you're going with the printing press analogy? Like, yes? I want children to take pride in themselves for any skill they practice and enjoy? But the printing press isn't really analogous to AI, for a number of reasons:

• LLM's, by their nature, produce an output that is of the same type as its inputs: text begets text, images beget images, etc. As such, you can make LLM's generate their own instructions and feed that back into it. As we know from the Claude Code leaks, Anthropic was doing just that, using CC to ask C to work on CC.

• Printing presses did not create more... printing presses. They created more print. Not even more words, the press itself didn't conjure Martin Luther's 95 theses into existence, it just copied an existing text. Which makes it a useful addition to our ability to create, not an outright replacement.

• Printing presses were still human operated machines, requiring knowledge of its inner workings to maintain, repair, and operate. They're not agentic, self-sustaining systems. Though you could argue that even AI is not self-sustaining, once its power grid fails. By the by, the printing press didn't threaten global ecological catastrophe all on its own.

• Printing presses did not, in fact, extinguish the pencil. Schools do still teach kids how to write. Heck, humble brag time, even I get compliments on my penmanship from time to time, and I write in all capital letters!