According to a new survey of worldwide software developers released on Tuesday, nearly all respondents are incorporating AI tools into their coding practices — but they’re not necessarily all that happy about it.
The report, part of an annual study conducted by developer help site Stack Overflow, reveals that 78.5 percent of respondents were already using AI developer tools at least “monthly or infrequently.” Another 5.3 percent of this year’s respondents planned to start using AI soon.
However, how these same respondents felt about these tools was significantly more split. While around 60 percent said their view toward the tools was either “favorable” or “very favorable,” another 20 percent said they felt either “indifferent” or “unsure” about them. Still another 20 percent viewed the tools either unfavorably or very much so.
The survey was based on 49,009 responses from across 160 countries, although the largest portion (20 percent) was based in the US. Answers were collected over a period from May 29 to June 23 of this year.
Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 65 and older and included every type of programmer, from experienced professionals to those just learning how to code. Interestingly, though, use of AI tools was about equal across all levels of experience, averaging about 80 percent.
So why the seeming ambivalence toward these same tools? Because a great many developers feel the tools just don’t work well.
Across the board, just 3.1 percent of respondents said that they “highly trust” results from AI tools, with the figure dropping to 2.5 percent among experienced developers. Those who were only learning to code had the most faith in AI, with a still-paltry 6.1 percent indicating high trust.
Overall, though, approaching AI with caution appeared to be the norm. Around 44 percent of respondents said that they were either “somewhat” or “highly” distrustful of AI, and even the 31 percent who said they were “somewhat trustful” of the tools weren’t exactly exuding confidence.
Humans still necessary
“Complex tasks” were reportedly AI’s worst weakness (although exactly what those tasks included was left to survey respondents’ interpretation). AI was either “bad” or “very poor” at handling complex tasks according to 40 percent of respondents. A mere 4.4 percent said the tools handled complex tasks “very well,” while 17 percent said they don’t use AI for complex tasks at all.
Popular sentiment says that companies are increasingly using AI to generate code that human programmers would ordinarily write. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been widely quoted as saying 30 percent of Redmond’s code is already attributable to AI. But Stack Overflow’s survey seems to indicate this isn’t typical of the broader software industry. Only 17 percent of survey respondents said that they were “currently mostly” using AI to write code, while 29 percent said that they don’t plan to use it for that purpose at all.
And “vibe coding,” the fully AI-centric programming method that’s made headlines, is right out, with 76 percent of those surveyed responding either “no” or “no, emphatically.”
What they do use it for is perhaps more enlightening. Replacing or supplementing traditional search engines was one popular choice, with 87 percent saying they used AI either for “searching for answers” or “learning new concepts or technologies” (or both).
Many developers’ reservations about AI seem to stem from what the survey defined as “frustrations” with the tech. Chief among these was 66 percent of respondents’ belief that AI produced “solutions that were almost right, but not quite.” What’s more, 16 percent lamented that “it’s hard to understand how or why the code works.”
This, in turn, generates further problems, with 45 percent of respondents griping that debugging AI-generated code is “more time-consuming” than for human-written code.
Then there’s the use of AI agents – the new buzzword du jour – in software development, but these seem to be either poorly understood or not yet widely adopted. Fully 69 percent of respondents said that they don’t currently use agents in their workflows, with 38 percent of those adding that they don’t plan to. Furthermore, 41 percent said that agents have had very little positive effect on their productivity.
And it seems that there are still important uses for humans in the software development supply chain after all. Stack Overflow’s survey reveals that 75 percent of developers would still seek a person for help in cases “when I don’t trust AI answers.” Ethical or security concerns about code called for human intervention according to 62 percent of respondents, and 58 percent would call upon a human “when I want to fully understand something.” Similar majorities would prefer to work with people when learning best practices or simply, “When I’m stuck.”
This should all come as welcome news to anyone hoping to enter — or merely survive — the modern software industry. While some companies are even suggesting that new applications should be prepared to use AI during the application process, Stack Overflow’s survey indicates that the reality for most is somewhat different.
The survey showed just 4.3 percent of respondents claiming, “I don’t think I’ll need help from people anymore,” thanks to AI. It seems, then, that for all the AI hype, anthrocentric workplaces are still here for a while. ®