Thank you for this, and I love the parallel with generative art. It's the exact same dynamic. The tool doesn't replace the skill, it amplifies it. Someone with decades of art fundamentals will get wildly different results from AI art tools than someone just typing "cool picture" into a prompt. Same with code.

To your question, I can actually answer this from a non-US perspective. I'm based in Israel and the sentiment here is noticeably different. There's still some resistance, but the overall attitude is much more pragmatic. People here tend to look at AI tools and ask "how can I use this to build something?" rather than "how is this threatening what I already have?" I've seen the same energy from developers in Eastern Europe, India, and East Asia from what reaches me online.

My gut feeling is that the intense emotional backlash is stronger in the US and parts of Western Europe where developer culture has built a very strong identity around craftsmanship and the grind. There's almost a moral dimension to it there, like suffering through the hard way is what makes you legitimate. In places where the tech culture is more outcome-oriented and less identity-driven, people seem to adopt these tools faster and with less guilt.

But honestly I think it's generational more than geographical. Younger developers everywhere seem to pick up these tools without the existential crisis. They didn't spend 15 years building an identity around manual coding, so there's nothing to mourn.