Does AI Make Developers Faster and More Efficient?
Senior developers, the study points out, have plenty of experience to lean on when dealing with AI-generated code, compared with juniors. What may be the case is that senior developers are more capable of finding vulnerabilities or mistakes, and believe making these changes is more efficient than writing the code themselves from scratch.
However, it still may not be the case that tools such as Copilot or Claude make software engineers faster and more efficient. In another trial from Fastly, open-source developers took 19% longer to complete tasks when using code assistants. This suggests that what may feel fast to a developer — maybe because they are getting all of the work done, pretty much immediately — doesn’t equate to tangible productivity gains.
Another notable element of this study is its clear stance on job satisfaction. Roughly 80% of developers, across all experience levels, said coding felt more enjoyable when working with AI. Ultimately, while we may not have figured out yet how effective AI is for developers, they seem to want it to stay, for the time being.
