Developers' Perspective on Today's and Tomorrow's Programming Tool Assistance: A Survey
Peng Kuang, Emma Söderberg, Martin Höst · 2024
Software development is a complex activity that needs a lot of tool assistance. Over the years there has been a lot of effort put into development of automated assistance to help with activities such as detection of issues via program analysis, or refactoring of code. Recently, the landscape of developer tool assistance is being disrupted with the entry of AI tools, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, powered via Large Language Models. Other kinds of tool assistance, for instance, gaze-driven assistance, is around the corner. What are programmers’ perceptions on tool assistance today? What do they see as good directions for the future?