It's actually quite similar to buying the services of a programmer off Upwork to build something for me, only with LLMs it's way cheaper and faster, with a shorter feedback loop.
If I spend a weekend standing up a self-hosted media system or something, I doubt anyone would dispute that's a fun building exercise.
If I do the same thing but use an LLM to build out instead, somehow it's not.
Yeah it's not the same kind of building as what we might have done pre-LLM but it need not be any less satisfying or rewarding.
The real disconnect seems to be the classic dichotomy: people who see coding as the point and the purpose, vs people who just want an outcome.
And that's fine!
I'm just don't understand why the one camp feels the need to deride the other.