Evolving with AI: A Longitudinal Analysis of Developer Logs

TL;DR

This study investigates the long-term impact of AI-powered coding assistants on developers' workflows, revealing increased code production, deletions, and perceived productivity improvements over two years.

Contribution

It provides the first longitudinal analysis combining telemetry and survey data to understand sustained AI influence on software development practices.

Findings

AI users produce more code but also delete more.

Developers report productivity gains from AI assistance.

Minimal perceived changes in code quality and reuse.

Abstract

AI-powered coding assistants are rapidly becoming fixtures in professional IDEs, yet their sustained influence on everyday development remains poorly understood. Prior research has focused on short-term use or self-reported perceptions, leaving open questions about how sustained AI use reshapes actual daily coding practices in the long term. We address this gap with a mixed-method study of AI adoption in IDEs, combining longitudinal two-year fine-grained telemetry from 800 developers with a survey of 62 professionals. We analyze five dimensions of workflow change: productivity, code quality, code editing, code reuse, and context switching. Telemetry reveals that AI users produce substantially more code but also delete significantly more. Meanwhile, survey respondents report productivity gains and perceive minimal changes in other dimensions. Our results offer empirical insights into the silent restructuring of software workflows and provide implications for designing future AI-augmented tooling.