AI Coding Tools Increase Developer Output

and Promote Greater Collaboration

 

 

 

 

According to GitHub study, AI coding tools are becoming more widely used, and developers are reporting notable increases in efficiency and productivity.

According to recent research, software development teams are starting to recognize the benefits of AI coding tools. Developers have revealed that the solutions have sped up their language learning and allowed them to save time.

A small sample of data scientists and software designers, together with 2,000 software engineers, developers, and programmers from the US, Brazil, Germany, and India were polled by GitHub.

More than 97% of participants admitted to have utilized AI coding tools in the workplace at some point, however not all of these uses were approved by their employers.

Software development teams last year saw more benefits from AI coding tools than previously acknowledged, according to GitHub. By utilizing these technologies, developers were able to produce software that was more secure, had higher-quality code, generated test cases more effectively, and adopted new languages more quickly.

According to recent research, software development teams are starting to recognize the benefits of AI coding tools. Developers have revealed that the solutions have sped up their language learning and allowed them to save time.

A small sample of data scientists and software designers, together with 2,000 software engineers, developers, and programmers from the US, Brazil, Germany, and India were polled by GitHub.

More than 97% of participants admitted to have utilized AI coding tools in the workplace at some point, however not all of these uses were approved by their employers.

Software development teams last year saw more benefits from AI coding tools than previously acknowledged, according to GitHub. By utilizing these technologies, developers were able to produce software that was more secure, had higher-quality code, generated test cases more effectively, and adopted new languages more quickly.

For instance, when employing AI tools, 90% of respondents in the US and 81% of respondents in India indicated a perceived improvement in code quality; 61% of respondents in Brazil and 60% of respondents in Germany stated the same.

Everyone was pretty much in agreement that code security would be improved overall by using AI-enhanced coding tools.

Furthermore, most development teams were upbeat about these technologies’ ability to either slightly or greatly improve their capacity to satisfy customer requirements.

However, the degree of this optimism was correlated with the respondent’s company’s position about the application of AI in software development.

But developers’ optimism about how AI tools could enhance their workflow was correlated with their organization’s attitude toward AI in general. According to GitHub, employees from companies that were actively promoting the deployment of AI were more likely to exhibit confidence in the system.

This implies that companies that embrace AI more might assist their staff members in realizing the full potential of the new technology.

According to GitHub, development teams are finding that time savings in particular allow them to concentrate their efforts in other areas. Of the respondents in the US and Germany, 47% said they used the extra time for system design and collaboration.

AI coding solutions offer time savings and productivity increases.

The results of GitHub support other studies examining how AI is influencing the development process. According to Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey, demand for AI coding tools has grown in the current year.

An increase from 70% in 2023 to 76% of respondents stated they are utilizing or intend to use AI tools in their development process.

The majority of respondents 72 percent thought that using AI in code development would be beneficial or extremely beneficial. Of them, 81% agreed that the main advantage of AI tools is increased productivity. Accelerating learning was shown to be a significant advantage for both seasoned professional developers (61%) and developers starting to code (71%).

Angus Allan, senior product manager at CreateFuture (previously xDesign), told ITPro that the productivity increases from using AI coding tools are “substantial” and that GitHub’s findings are consistent with his company’s experiences.

Our in-house research showed an average 33% increase in productivity across a range of software development life cycle positions. Similar increases in productivity in non-coding tasks were observed by our product team, he continued, indicating that generative AI technologies are widely relevant to software development teams.

“Our results roughly match previous research, which gives us confidence that GenAI, when used properly, can have a real, noticeable impact on productivity.”

Allan contended that while productivity increases are obvious, the actual benefit AI technologies may provide to companies lies in the time developers can free up to work on other projects that bring greater value to the company, like improved teamwork.

The true value of GenAI tooling hasn’t just lied in increased productivity; it also lies in the things we can do with the extra time we save during development. Our company has been pushing employees to view GenAI as an additional tool in their toolbox that allows them to focus more on “value-add” tasks like working together, interacting with clients, and mentoring younger team members,” he said.

“Organizations will be losing out on a significant chance to leverage GenAI as a catalyst for creativity and cooperation if they implement AI technology without knowing and advising teams on what to do with the extra time they save in the development process.”

Workers at hesitant companies are more prone to mistrust AI products.

One important conclusion from GitHub‘s study was that employees’ perceptions can be greatly impacted by how an organization encourages the use of AI coding tools.

For example, 48% of employees in businesses that actively encouraged the use of AI technologies claimed that their toolchains were “easy to use,” whereas 65% of employees in businesses that took a neutral stance on AI claimed that their toolchains were “complex.”

According to Allan, CreateFuture also discovered a connection between how developers perceived the tools and an organization’s position on AI.

Notable is the relationship between developer experience and organizational AI posture. According to our research, productivity improvements grew over time as we improved training, created specialized GenAI workflows, and observed a wider uptake of the technology.