Backslash introduced a new, free resource for vibe coders, developers and security teams - the Backslash MCP Server Security Hub.
A few months ago, Warp surveyed 1500+ developers about how they use the command line terminal. Specifically, the survey asked questions around common pain points, popular plugins, use of artificial intelligence, types of customizations, and perceived expertise in industry-level developers. What's the story behind the complex relationship between coder and terminal? Here is what the survey revealed.
General Terminal Usage Patterns
What do developers mainly use the terminal for? The data shows that it's essential for common tasks like compiling and running code and version control. Less frequently, respondents turn to the CLI for system monitoring and production debugging.
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What is the biggest pain point developers have in the terminal? An overwhelming majority (70%) say that remembering complex terminal commands is the major challenge.
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Emergence of AI in the terminal
There's no buzzier technology right now than AI, so how has that penetrated into the command line experience? Surprisingly (or maybe not?) 40% of respondents indicated they do not use any AI tools in the terminal. 10% express no intention to ever integrate with AI.
Of the developers that were interested in the application of AI, 40% believed the biggest impact it would have would be helping with command generation and suggestions. For example, generating a script to run data migration or suggesting hard-to-remember flags in a kubernetes command.
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Do Developers Feel Comfortable Using the Terminal?
Did you know that 70% of our respondents marked the terminal as a primary tool in their workflow (meaning that they use it daily), but only 19% consider themselves “experts”?
The terminal is foundational for many developers, but there seems to be a gap - whether in education, confidence, or tool discoverability - that impacts their self-perceived mastery.
Survey Respondent Overview
Of the respondents, over 60% are full-time software engineers at tech companies. There's a relatively even distribution between early levels (1-2 years) and senior levels (15+ years) of coding experience, with a slightly heavier skew towards those who are mid-level (3-5 years). Something important to note is ~80% of the respondents are Mac users.
Conclusion
The command-line remains an indispensable tool at the center of many developer workflows and there is now more visibility into how developers use it, what's lacking, and what the future of it might look like.
Industry News
Google's Gemma 3n is the latest member of Google's family of open models. Google is announcing that Gemma 3n is now fully available for developers with the full feature set including supporting image, audio, video and text.
Google announced that Imagen 4, its latest text-to-image model, is now available in paid preview in Google AI Studio and the Gemini API.
Payara announced the launch of Payara Qube, a fully automated, zero-maintenance platform designed to revolutionize enterprise Java deployment.
Google released its new AI-first Colab to all users, following a successful early access period that had a very positive response from the developer community.
Salesforce announced new MuleSoft AI capabilities that enable organizations to build a foundation for secure, scalable AI agent orchestration.
Harness announced the General Availability (GA) of Harness AI Test Automation – an AI-native, end-to-end test automation solution, that's fully integrated across the entire CI/CD pipeline, built to meet the speed, scale, and resilience demanded by modern DevOps.
With AI Test Automation, Harness is transforming the software delivery landscape by eliminating the bottlenecks of manual and brittle testing and empowering teams to deliver quality software faster than ever before.
Wunderkind announced the release of Build with Wunderkind — an API-first integration suite designed to meet brands and developers where they are.
Jitterbit announced the global expansion of its partner program and new Jitterbit University partner curricula.
Tricentis unveiled two innovations that aim to redefine the future of software testing for the enterprise.
Snyk announced the acquisition of Invariant Labs, an AI security research firm and early pioneer in developing safeguards against emerging AI threats.
ActiveState expanded support of secure open source to include free and customized low-to-no vulnerability containers that facilitate modern software development.
Pythagora launched an all-in-one AI development platform that enables users to build and deploy full-stack applications from a single prompt.
Cloudflare announced that Containers is in public beta.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced the launch of the Agent2Agent (A2A) project, an open protocol created by Google for secure agent-to-agent communication and collaboration.