In past issues of this newsletter, I've linked to articles and studies that discuss the impact of AI on productivity. One area of great interest that I'm sure we'll continue to see studies on is the impact on developer productivity.
For example, a recent article called
Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity claims the following:
"Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower."
Then there's a report called
How much does AI impact development speed? An enterprise-based randomized controlled trial. Note what they found, as explained in their abstract:
"We found that AI significantly shortened the time developers spent on task. Our best estimate of the size of this effect, controlling for factors known to influence developer time on task, stands at about 21%, although our confidence interval is large."
These two results seem to be in contradiction to each other. I personally haven't delved into the methods and other details of the two studies, so there's probably a good explanation of the seeming discrepancy. Nonetheless, it's important to note how things are progressing with the use of AI, and I'm sure we'll see more studies like these in the future.
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
