This Question comes up every few weeks will AI take away Software Developers’ jobs? With breakthroughs in the field of Generative AI and AI getting better at writing and debugging code, we might think coders will be worried. Well, the yearly Stack Overflow survey says that is not the case.
Highlights:
- Stack Overflow published its yearly developer survey for 2024, with 65,000 professionals participating in it.
- On the topic of AI, 68.3% of developers said that they don’t believe AI is a threat to their jobs.
- However, only 43% of developers trust the accuracy of the AI tools for coding.
Breaking down Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024
Stack Overflow is the largest and most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their programming knowledge, and build their careers. Every year, the company publishes a survey that is answered by developers across hundreds of countries. And now, the 2024 survey is out!
Some of these results were something we expected, JavaScript ranked as the top programming language in the last few years, as well as Visual Studio Code beats every other IDE as a favorite of developers.
But the controversial questions for this time were how developers think about the AI revolution.
68.3% of Developers Don’t Believe AI is a Threat
We already wrote about the topic that whether AI will kill software jobs or not. The concerns stem from the fact that AI is capable of largely reducing the manpower required for tasks. Something that needed 4-5 junior developers will now need an experienced software engineer with an AI copilot. However, developers don’t agree with that.
In the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 68.3% of Developers do NOT think that AI Tools are a threat to their jobs.
This answer is probably a huge relief to students who are just starting to code.
Many freshers are getting worried about AI taking over jobs due to the current situation in the job market. This is evident when you look at the percentage of people who are just learning to code – have voted only 58% No to the same question.
This shows the lack of confidence in youngsters and they are not to be blamed for this misconception because society keeps on feeding them this fact.
Not just that, around 62% of developers said that they are already using AI tools when coding.
Most developers use the AI tool in writing code, searching for coding-related queries, debugging their existing code, or doing proper documentation of it. A quarter of respondents are even using it for testing!
So, not only should new learners have a sigh of relief that AI is already a part of the development process in the current world, but they also need to know that they need to learn how to use it correctly. If they know that, this will add a new skill to their resume. However, don’t forget to cover your programming basics, that is the main thing still.
The main reason AI is a good thing for them is that it increases productivity, not just for themselves, but for the company also. But there is a concern, and that is that a majority of them don’t have full faith in it.
We already talked about a recent study where they found that 52% of the programming responses produced by ChatGPT are inaccurate. And the Developers in this new Stack Overflow survey had a similar response.
AI is Still A ‘Challenge’ for Coders
Now coming to the other questions, When professional developers were asked what the issues they face with AI at work? Around 67% of them replied that they don’t trust the output of the tools and around 65% replied that AI tools lack context of codebase, internal architecture and/or proper company knowledge.
But note that security is still a problem. Most of the major tech companies don’t trust AI completely with their company secrets. They have proper policies in place that prevent employees from using any sort of AI technologies for work-related purposes.
Although it is even true that AI tools are more likely to be integrated into the workspaces from next year, It is mostly for small tasks like generating synthetic data or documenting code.
However, the sentiments for using AI are going down slowly. 77% of respondents had a favourable view of AI tools in 2023, which fell to 72% in 2024. This declining trend shows that although the tools can do the basic work in a software field, the technology is still very far from achieving what a human can do.
Many people often assume AI tools do all their work and get massively disappointed when they fail to do so or don’t live up to their standards. This shows that we must stop perceiving Artificial Intelligence as the answer to everything and start thinking about it as an aid that will make our lives a little bit easier.
Conclusion
AI is not going to snatch away our jobs soon, at least that’s now what developers think of right now. However, this doesn’t mean you can relax. As a new coder or even a professional dev, you need to stay in touch with the latest technologies and constantly update your knowledge banks to survive in this competitive world.
