Published: 30 August 2024
AI will transform the future role of software engineers, but human expertise and creativity will always be essential to delivering complex, innovative software. This research helps software engineering leaders to cut through the hype and examine the current and future impact of AI on developers.
In the short term, AI will operate within boundaries. AI tools will generate modest productivity increases by augmenting existing developer work patterns and tasks. The productivity benefits of AI will be most significant for senior developers in organizations with mature engineering practices.
In the medium term, the emergence of AI agents will push boundaries. AI agents will not replace human developers but will transform work patterns by enabling developers to fully automate and offload more tasks. This will lead to the rise of AI-native software engineering.
In the long term, advances in AI will break boundaries. The efficiency gains and new
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Analysts:
Philip Walsh, Gunjan Gupta, Helen Poitevin, Keith Mann, Dave Micko, Manjunath Bhat
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