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State of AI-assisted software development

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Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#11

Post by hu3 »

wiz21c wrote: post #2

> This indicates that AI outputs are perceived as useful and valuable by many of this year’s survey respondents, despite a lack of complete trust in them. Or the respondents have hard times admitting AI can replace them :-) I'm a bit cynical but sometimes when I use Claude, it is downright frightening how good it is sometimes. Having coded for a lot of year, I'm sometimes a bit scared that my craft can, somtimes, be…

I also find it great for prompts like:

"this function should do X, spot inconsistencies, potential issues and bugs"

It's eye opening sometimes.

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#12

Post by thebigspacefuck »

azdle wrote: post #7
pluc wrote: post #4

Every study I've read says nobody is seeing productivity gains from AI use. Here's an AI vendor saying the opposite. Funny.

It's not even claiming that. It's only claiming that people who responded to the survey feel more productive. (Unless you assume that people taking this survey have an objective measure for their own productivity.) > Significant productivity gains: Over 80% of respondents indicate that AI has enhanced their productivity. _Feeling_ more productive is inline with the one proper study I've seen.

The METR study showed even though people feel more productive they weren’t https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#13

Post by Pannoniae »

mlinhares wrote: post #10
Pannoniae wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few explanations for this, and it's not necessarily contradictory. 1. AI doesn't improve productivity and people just have cognitive biases. (logical, but I also don't think it's true from what I know...) 2. AI does improve productivity, but only if you find your own workflow and what tasks it's good for, and many companies try to shoehorn it into things which just don't work for it. 3. AI does improve prod…

Why not all? I've seen them all play out. There's also the people that are downstream of AI slop that feel less productive because now they have to clean up the shit other people produced.

You're right, it kinda depends on the situation itself! And the downstream effects. Although, I'd argue that the one you're talking about isn't really caused by AI itself, that's squarely a "I can't say no to the slop because they'll take my head off" problem. In healthy places, you would just say "hell no I'm not merging slop", just as you have previously said "no I'm not merging shit copypasted from stackoverflow".

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#14

Post by cogman10 »

wiz21c wrote: post #2

> This indicates that AI outputs are perceived as useful and valuable by many of this year’s survey respondents, despite a lack of complete trust in them. Or the respondents have hard times admitting AI can replace them :-) I'm a bit cynical but sometimes when I use Claude, it is downright frightening how good it is sometimes. Having coded for a lot of year, I'm sometimes a bit scared that my craft can, somtimes, be…

So long as you view AI as a sometimes competent liar, then it can be useful.

I've found AI is pretty good at dumb boilerplate stuff. I was able to whip out prototypes, client interfaces, tests, etc pretty fast with AI.

However, when I've asked AI "Identify performance problems or bugs in this code" I find it'll just make up nonsense. Particularly if there aren't problems with the code.

And it makes sense that this is the case. AI has been trained on a mountain of boilerplate and a thimble of performance and bug optimizations.

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#15

Post by pluc »

wiz21c wrote: post #2

> This indicates that AI outputs are perceived as useful and valuable by many of this year’s survey respondents, despite a lack of complete trust in them. Or the respondents have hard times admitting AI can replace them :-) I'm a bit cynical but sometimes when I use Claude, it is downright frightening how good it is sometimes. Having coded for a lot of year, I'm sometimes a bit scared that my craft can, somtimes, be…

Straight code writing has never been the problem - it's the understanding of said code that is. When you rely on AI, and AI creates something, it might increase productivity immediately but once you need to debug something that uses that piece of code, it will nullify that gain as you have no idea where to look. That's just one aspect of this false equivalency.

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#16

Post by welshwelsh »

Pannoniae wrote: post #8
pluc wrote: post #4

Every study I've read says nobody is seeing productivity gains from AI use. Here's an AI vendor saying the opposite. Funny.

There's a few explanations for this, and it's not necessarily contradictory. 1. AI doesn't improve productivity and people just have cognitive biases. (logical, but I also don't think it's true from what I know...) 2. AI does improve productivity, but only if you find your own workflow and what tasks it's good for, and many companies try to shoehorn it into things which just don't work for it. 3. AI does improve prod…

I think it's 5.

I was very impressed when I first started using AI tools. Felt like I could get so much more done.

A couple of embarrassing production incidents later, I no longer feel that way. I always tell myself that I will check the AI's output carefully, but then end up making mistakes that wouldn't have happened if I wrote the code myself.

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#17

Post by knes »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #12
azdle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even claiming that. It's only claiming that people who responded to the survey feel more productive. (Unless you assume that people taking this survey have an objective measure for their own productivity.) > Significant productivity gains: Over 80% of respondents indicate that AI has enhanced their productivity. _Feeling_ more productive is inline with the one proper study I've seen.

The METR study showed even though people feel more productive they weren’t https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

the MTR study is a joke. it surveyed only 16 devs. in the era of Sonnet 3.5

Can we stop citing this study

I'm not saying the DORA study is more accurate, but at least it surveyed 5000 developers, globally and more recently (between June 13 and July 21, 2025) which means using the most recent SOTA models

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#19

Post by bopbopbop7 »

wiz21c wrote: post #2

> This indicates that AI outputs are perceived as useful and valuable by many of this year’s survey respondents, despite a lack of complete trust in them. Or the respondents have hard times admitting AI can replace them :-) I'm a bit cynical but sometimes when I use Claude, it is downright frightening how good it is sometimes. Having coded for a lot of year, I'm sometimes a bit scared that my craft can, somtimes, be…

Or you aren’t as good as you think you are :-)

Almost every person I worked with that is impressed by AI generated code has been a low performer that can’t spot the simplest bugs in the code. Usually the same developers that blindly copy pasted from stack overflow before.

Re: State of AI-assisted software development

#20

Post by ACCount37 »

Pannoniae wrote: post #8
pluc wrote: post #4

Every study I've read says nobody is seeing productivity gains from AI use. Here's an AI vendor saying the opposite. Funny.

There's a few explanations for this, and it's not necessarily contradictory. 1. AI doesn't improve productivity and people just have cognitive biases. (logical, but I also don't think it's true from what I know...) 2. AI does improve productivity, but only if you find your own workflow and what tasks it's good for, and many companies try to shoehorn it into things which just don't work for it. 3. AI does improve prod…

"People use AI to do the same tasks with less effort" maps onto what we've seen with other types of workplace automation - like Excel formulas or VBA scripts.

Why report to your boss that you managed to get a script to do 80% of your work, when you can just use that script quietly, and get 100% of your wage with 20% of the effort?

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