We conduct a randomized controlled trial to understand how early-2025 AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories. Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.
The main reason why I still think it’s faster even if it’s “slower”: it does its work in the background while I can do other things, like respond to emails, attend meetings, look at other bits of code, etc. I turn on the audio notification to have to ping me when it’s done.
The main reason why I still think it’s faster even if it’s “slower”: it does its work in the background while I can do other things, like respond to emails, attend meetings, look at other bits of code, etc. I turn on the audio notification to have to ping me when it’s done.