Ask HN: Estimating % of dev using coding assistants
7 comments
I've gone so far as to become frustrated with what I found in the open source options like Copilot and have been building my own custom extension, which is now better with gemini-3-flash than Copilot is with any model. Their prompt/context engineering is trash and their tools are not great
I know lots of junior developers using tools like Cursor. When talking to them about it, they say they're not really learning how to program and don't know what they're doing most of the time. I do question how effective they actually are.
I recall that before AI, junior developers weren't very productive their first year on the job, but they became at least 10x as productive as they ramped up.
I'm left wondering if the "AI boost" that junior devs are getting now is leaving them less productive than if they had the ramp up that we had in the past. Maybe AI is making them 2-3x as productive but they're staying stuck there. Whereas without AI they might learn more and reach higher productivity.
The experienced devs I know use AI as a collaborative tool on the side. Like asking Claude or ChatGPT targeted questions. That's what I'm doing as well. I know I can code much faster than the junior devs using Cursor that I interact with.
I recall that before AI, junior developers weren't very productive their first year on the job, but they became at least 10x as productive as they ramped up.
I'm left wondering if the "AI boost" that junior devs are getting now is leaving them less productive than if they had the ramp up that we had in the past. Maybe AI is making them 2-3x as productive but they're staying stuck there. Whereas without AI they might learn more and reach higher productivity.
The experienced devs I know use AI as a collaborative tool on the side. Like asking Claude or ChatGPT targeted questions. That's what I'm doing as well. I know I can code much faster than the junior devs using Cursor that I interact with.
The 'bleeding-edge' of Software Engineering nowadays is:
Use Cursor for business rules and things that are a bit more complex and you need to be engaged, iterating by talking with AI.
Claude Code or agents for work that can be completely delegated.
Using Copilot and pasting is a very outdated way of working. I'm sure with the method above you would be working at least 2x output in the worst case scenario (when you need to iterate a lot using Cursor).
Of course, a good amount of time now is spent reviewing code, doing requirements and other things that are very time consuming, which the AI currently sucks at doing.
I've tried many code review bots but they are mostly useless, but I bet this will be the next thing that AI will greatly improve. It's almost usable now.
Use Cursor for business rules and things that are a bit more complex and you need to be engaged, iterating by talking with AI.
Claude Code or agents for work that can be completely delegated.
Using Copilot and pasting is a very outdated way of working. I'm sure with the method above you would be working at least 2x output in the worst case scenario (when you need to iterate a lot using Cursor).
Of course, a good amount of time now is spent reviewing code, doing requirements and other things that are very time consuming, which the AI currently sucks at doing.
I've tried many code review bots but they are mostly useless, but I bet this will be the next thing that AI will greatly improve. It's almost usable now.
From what I've seen a ton of people are using Claude Code or Cursor daily. I wouldn't be surprised if most startups are at 100% use right now. The big tech companies are a bit slower, but have started rolling out almost unlimited token use so I wouldn't be surprised if they are above 50% adoption by the end of the year.
Start with Claude Code if you haven't tried it yet as it can edit your files directly and has some pretty fantastic skills/plugins that are quite interesting. (Copilot is quite a bit far behind unfortunately.)
Start with Claude Code if you haven't tried it yet as it can edit your files directly and has some pretty fantastic skills/plugins that are quite interesting. (Copilot is quite a bit far behind unfortunately.)
I'm young and seen people in high school and uni code. I will say i'm surprised with how many young people use it. they almost take it for granted. i have seen a rare luddite at a hackathon once, he just refused to use any ai coding tools. i'm starting to think people like that are just uncomfortable with change.
According to the stats my company produces, about 3% of the software developers here have used these tools more than twice. It's about the same percentage in amongst my developer friends not at my company, but that's a much smaller sample size.
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/ai#3-ai-agents - I expect it has only gone up in the months since this came out.
Yet, when i ask my collegues or friends, i feel very alone, where developpers are only asking a few questions to copilot, nothing more.
HN is a microcosm of geeks/early adopters. How is it around you ? Which percentage of people around you ''adopted'' coding agents ? Is there reluctancy to use AI ?