AI developer tools 2023

The world of technology is in a perpetual state of evolution, and its progress is often shaped by the voices and choices of developers worldwide. Each year, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey serves as a compass, illuminating the latest trends, preferences, and aspirations of this community. In its 2023 edition, the survey took an in-depth look at the opinions and experiences of developers across various domains, uncovering invaluable insights that shed light on the ever-expanding realm of artificial intelligence (AI) in development.

In this blog post, we dive into the results of the survey, focusing on the AI developer tools questions and responses surrounding the current surge in AI popularity. We highlight the key findings to uncover whether AI is truly transforming the way developers operate or if it is merely a result of exaggerated hype.

Background

AI developer tools, such as GitHub Co-Pilot, are innovative software solutions that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to assist developers in their coding tasks. These tools go beyond traditional code editors and provide intelligent suggestions, automated code completion, and even generate code snippets based on contextual information.

GitHub Co-Pilot, for instance, is an AI-powered code completion tool that integrates with popular code editors. It analyses code patterns, comments, and documentation from a vast collection of open-source projects to provide developers with relevant suggestions as they write code. By understanding the context and purpose of the code, AI developer tools aim to boost productivity, improve code quality, and enhance the overall development experience.

These tools are designed to augment developers’ capabilities, enabling them to write code more efficiently and effectively. They can provide assistance with complex algorithms, suggest optimal coding practices, and offer real-time feedback to streamline the development process. By leveraging the power of AI, these developer tools aim to accelerate software development, promote collaboration, and empower developers to create innovative applications in less time.

Current AI developer tools:

Survey Findings

Currently using or planning to use AI development tools

A significant majority of professional developers, over 70%, are currently using or intending to use AI development tools. The largest uptake is by the least experienced developers.

While in Australia, the percentage of all developers using AI development tools is slightly lower at 66.1%.

This roughly aligns to the favourability sentiment by experience

Reasons for using AI development tools

The top reasons returned by the survey

Greater efficiency – refers to the speed of generation of optimal code practices and patterns
Improved accuracy – refers to the generation of correct and reliable solutions
Improved collaboration – working with other developers on same code base
Increased productivity – refers to maximising a developers time by intelligent suggestions for automation tasks and workflow
Faster learning- refers to how proficient the developers become with the specific technology

Among professional developers these were rated as the main reason in the following order:

Increased productivity 37.4%
Greater efficiency 27.9%
Faster learning 27.4%
Improved accuracy 14.1%
Improved collaboration 4.2%

These are largely similar numbers across the experience breakdown.

In Australia the breakdown is

Increased productivity 33.4%
Greater efficiency 25.8%
Faster learning 24.1%
Improved accuracy 12.1%
Improved collaboration 2.3%

Workflow usage

Given the workflow breakdown is

Learning about codebase
Project planning
Writing code¹
Documenting³
Debugging²
Testing⁴
Reviewing
Monitoring
Collaboration

We will focus on the most popular (1 – 4) of these to use with AI development tools. The numbers among professional developers are:

The numbers for Australian developers are

Key Takeaways

The adoption of AI development tools appears to be largely favourable, considering their relatively recent introduction to the software development toolkit.
Both the sentiment and usage of these tools are strong, with a particular emphasis on their popularity among the less experienced developers which indicates that they recognise the advantages and potential of AI tools in enhancing their productivity and learning.
The positive reception of AI development tools suggests that developers see value and benefits in utilising these tools for their coding tasks.
Australian developers show similar trends: While the overall usage of AI development tools is slightly lower among Australian developers compared to the global average, the preferences and reasons for adoption remain largely consistent.
Overall, the findings indicate a promising and encouraging trend towards the adoption and acceptance of AI development tools in the software development community.