Cited by 215Software Engineering ResearchSoftware Engineering Techniques and PracticesUsability and User Interface Design

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 48 of the 48 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A Large-Scale Survey on the Usability of AI Programming Assistants: Successes and Challenges

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Liang, Jenny T., Yang, Chenyang, Myers, Brad A.·2024·Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

Abstract

The software engineering community recently has witnessed widespread deployment of AI programming assistants, such as GitHub Copilot. However, in practice, developers do not accept AI programming assistants' initial suggestions at a high frequency. This leaves a number of open questions related to the usability of these tools. To understand developers' practices while using these tools and the important usability challenges they face, we administered a survey to a large population of developers and received responses from a diverse set of 410 developers. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses, we found that developers are most motivated to use AI programming assistants because they help developers reduce key-strokes, finish programming tasks quickly, and recall syntax, but resonate less with using them to help brainstorm potential solutions. We also found the most important reasons why developers do not use these tools are because these tools do not output code that addresses certain functional or non-functional requirements and because developers have trouble controlling the tool to generate the desired output. Our findings have implications for both creators and users of AI programming assistants, such as designing minimal cognitive effort interactions with these tools to reduce distractions for users while they are programming.

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Research works printed but not linked: 7

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Metadata

Authors
Liang, J. T., Yang, C., & Myers, B. A.
Affiliations
Carnegie Mellon University (US)
Venue
Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering
Publisher
ACM
Published
2024-02-06
Pages
1-13
ISSN
0270-5257 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4391558520
Cited by
203
References
45
Citations by year
2026: 68 · 2025: 92 · 2024: 42
FWCI
76.92
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Funders
National Science Foundation (1745016, 1856641, 2140739)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
Keywords
GitHub Copilot, usability, developer practices, code completion, developer motivation, non-functional requirements, cognitive effort, tool control, large language models

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