O'Reilly: AI-Enabled Developer Tools Can Improve Productivity - But It Comes at a Price
September 13, 2023

Pete Goldin
DEVOPSdigest

"Developer enablement" tools increased productivity, but they present challenges relating to upskilling and retraining developers to use these tools, according to The next generation of developer productivity, a report authored by Mike Loukides, VP of Emerging Tech Content at O'Reilly Media.


The biggest software development challenges faced by survey respondents include:

■ Productivity - 29%

■ Time to market and deployment speed - 19%

■ Job satisfaction – 12%

■ Lack of good job candidates - 11%

■ Employee retention – 10%

The report states, "A surprisingly large percentage of respondents (28%) aren't making any changes to become more productive. But 20% are changing their onboarding and upskilling processes, 15% are hiring new developers, and 13% are using self-service engineering platforms."

Additional report findings include:

■ 51% said their organizations are using self-service deployment pipelines to increase productivity

■ 13% said while they are using self-service pipelines, they have not seen an increase in productivity.

■ 33% said they are using AI-based programming tools. Read the report to find out why Mike Loukides thinks this number is actually even higher, and to read some stats of particular vendors.

With regard to AI-based developer tools, the report concludes: "Software developers are getting value from these tools, but don't let the buzz fool you: that value doesn't come for free … Each has its own learning curve, and it's easy to underestimate how steep that curve can be."

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of DEVOPSdigest
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