Stack Overflow Knows code assistant pulse survey results

Are software engineers really adopting Coding Assistants?

Hello Everyone,

After Github Copilot got successful, a lot of others have come on to the scene in the ChatGPT wave and this includes the likes of Mistral’s recent Codestral LLM. Codestral is Mistral AI's first open-weight generative AI model designed for code generation tasks, automating code completion, generation, and testing across multiple languages.

Mistral of course claims to be empowering developers and democratising coding with Mistral AI.

According to Codesignal, 81% of developers surveyed say they use AI-powered coding assistants.

In recent times some of the coding Assistants I’ve been watching are:

1. GitHub Copilot

2. Amazon Q Developer

3. Tabnine

4. Gemini in Android Studio

5. Watsonx Code Assistant

6. ChatGPT

7. Code Llama

8. Replit AI

Stack Overflow survey maybe aren’t what they used to be but developer surveys are all worth glancing at if you are interested in AI at the intersection of the future of code and software engineers like I am.

Stack Overflow did manage to ask some fairly salient questions though. Like how often CodeGen tools fall short, what challenges developers face with these tools, and what they are doing with all of the free time these tools purport to offer.

• The majority of respondents (76%) let us know they are using or are planning to use AI code assistants.

• Some roles use these tools more than others amongst professional developers: Academic researchers (87%), AI developers (76%), frontend developers (75%), mobile developers (60%), and data scientists (67%) currently use code assistants the most. 

• Other roles indicated they are using code assistants (or planning to) much less than average: data/business analysts (29%), desktop developers (39%), data engineers (39%), and embedded developers (42%).

Who uses these tools? More So

1. Software Engineers

2. Academic Researchers

3. AI Developers

4. Frontend Developers

5. Mobile Devs

6. Data Scientists

Less So

1. Business Analysts

2. Desktop Devs

3. Data Engineers

4. Embedded Devs

For or Against they are Here

• AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT are increasingly popular among developers, offering speed and productivity boosts by suggesting code completions based on context.

• AI coding assistants may speed up development but compromise code quality if not used carefully — and code must be reviewed and verified forensically.