> There is a certain amount of regular work that I don't want to automate away, even though maybe I can. That regular work keeps me in the domain. It leads to epiphany's in regards to the hard problems. It adds time and something to do in between the hard problems.

Exactly, some kinds of refactors are like this for me. Pretty mindless, kind of relaxing, almost algebraic. It's a pleasant way to wander around the code base just cleaning and improving things while you walk down a data or control flow. If you're following a thread then you don't even make decisions really, but you also get better acquainted with parts you don't know, and subconsciously get the practice holding some kind of gestalt in your head.

This kind of almost dream-like "grooming" seems important and useful, because it preps you for working with design problems later. Definitely formatting and style type trivia should absolutely be automated, and real architecture/design work requires active engagement. But there's a sweet spot in the middle.

Even before LLMs maybe you could automate some of these refactors with tools for manipulating ASTs or CSTs, if your language of choice had those tools. But automating everything that can be automated won't necessarily pay off if you're losing fluency that you might need later.

In my experience, a lot of the hard thinking gets done in my back-brain while I'm doing other things, and emerges when I take up the problem again. Doing the regular work gives my back-brain time to percolate; doing hard thing after hard thing doesn't.

Also at the end of the day, humans aren't machines. We are goopy meat and chemistry.

You cannot exclusively do hard things back to back to back every 8 hour day without fail. It will either burn you out, or you will make mistakes, or you will just be miserable.

Human brains do not want to think hard, because millions of years of evolution built brains to be cheap, and they STILL use like 10% of our daily energy.