articleFeb 6, 2024GOLD OA

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

JTJenny T. LiangCYChenyang YangBABrad A. Myers

Carnegie Mellon University

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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…

Citation impact

126
total citations
FWCI
89.43
Percentile
100%
References
46
Citations per year

Authors

3

Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Usability
  • System usability scale
  • Computer science
  • Scale (ratio)
  • Human–computer interaction
  • Software engineering
  • Usability engineering
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