Published on the 20/08/2024 | Written by Heather Wright

Tech debt frustrations, dwindling incomes and favourite technologies…

Developers don’t see AI as a threat to their jobs, but they are frustrated by technical debt, wary about AI’s accuracy and ability to handle complex tasks and average incomes are falling

That’s according to the latest Stack Overflow Developer Survey of 65,000 software developers across 185 countries.

“AI tool usage is up, but AI favourability is down, possibly due to ‘disappointing’ results.”

It found AI tool usage among developers surged to 62 percent this year, up from 44 percent a year ago. All up, 76 percent say they are either already using or plan to be using AI tools ‘soon’. The remaining 24 percent are holding firm, with no plans to use the technology.

But if AI tool usage is up, AI favourability is down, dropping from 77 percent last year to 72 percent this year – possibly due to ‘disappointing’ results experienced by many, Stack Overflow says – and 31 percent are sceptical about AI accuracy. Experienced developers are more likely to distrust than their beginner counterparts.

Almost half of professional developers also believe AI tools are either bad or very bad at handling complex tasks.

Professional developers agree the issue isn’t user error – twice as many cite lack of trust or AI tools lacking context of codebase, internal architecture and/or company knowledge as the key challenges with AI tools, compared to a lack of proper training on the new tools.

As to that question about whether developers are feeling threatened by AI, 70 percent of professionals say no. Learners are less confident, with 27 percent saying they’re not sure and 15 percent expressing concern that it was a threat.

ChatGPT (82 percent)is used by twice as many developers as second-placed GitHub Copilot (41 percent), with Google Gemini (24 percent), Bing AI (16 percent) and Visual Studio Intellicode (14 percent) rounding out the top five, trailing well behind the top two. Anthropic’s Claude is even further behind, used by just eight percent of developers, while Meta AI and Amazon Q don’t even make the top 10.

Despite that, the developers are looking to a future where AI tools will be more integrated into the ways they are working, particularly in writing, testing and documenting code. Greater integration for generating content or synthetic data, deployment and monitoring, predictive analytics and searching for answers are also expected by many in the coming year.

This year’s survey also notes falling income, with most developers outside of people management positions reporting salary decreases of at least US$10,000.

Those decrease aren’t the result of changes in employment status, Stack Overflow says: 80-81 percent of developers report full time employment over the last three years.

Some roles, including blockchain developers have succumbed to market corrections. Their pay packets have plummeted from six figures in 2023 to US$86,000 annually.

Salary is only one issue developers are contending with however. When it comes to their frustrations, it’s actually technical debt that’s the biggest bug bear, with 62 percent of respondents – both individual contributors and people managers – acting it as a frustration.

Complexity of tech stacks for both build and deployment were pet peeves for around 33 percent of all respondents – but it was individual contributors who were most being bugged by that complexity, for people managers it was the reliability of the tools and systems being used that irked more.

Despite the frustrations, two thirds of respondents say they’re satisfied or even happy with their job.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the Stack Overflow Developer Survey without a plethora of technologies rated by developers too.

This year Javascript (with 62 percent of votes), HTML/CSS (53 percent) and Python (51 percent) top the list of most used languages – echoing the results from last year.

Javascript has been a mainstay, ranking as the most popular language ever since the survey began in 2011.

Rust, however, is the language developers most want to use again, with an 83 percent ‘admiration’ rate, while Python is most popular for those learning to code – who also say they want to use an average of 12 different languages next year.

For the first time the survey also looks at embedded technology, with Raspberry Pi (39 percent) and Arduino (30 percent) topping the list for most popular embedded technologies.