80% of developers find AI coding more addictive than helpful

A new Coddy Developer Survey found that four in five developers, 80%, say their use of AI has felt more like a dependence than an advantage.

www.zdnet.com/article/80-of-developers-find-ai-coding-more-addictive-than-helpful/

I can kind of relate. There are a lot of parts of coding I find a little boring.

• Once the interesting problem is solved and all you need to do is follow through
• Large scale refactorings in ways too complicated for an IDE.
• Fixing annoying dependency / migration issues

When you use an expensive AI agent, like Claude, it can nowadays handle these tasks competently, to the point where I only need to correct small things here and there.

When you give these tasks to an AI agent, it feels a bit like delegating to a junior, but without the guilt of giving someone a menial or boring task. That allows me to work on stuff I find more interesting. To me, THAT’S why it’s adictive.

However, this isn’t without cost. First, there’s the societal costs: Environmental, centralization of power, contribution to hardware shortages and a bubble

Second, there are more personal costs. You’ll come to rely more and more on these tools, and your skills will rust. You may end up avoiding learning things about a codebase because you delegate it away.

It’s a tempting tool. One which in my experience can genuinely help, but is easy to misuse.