76 percent of developers do not use vibe coding, whereby entire pieces of code are automatically generated by AI without human intervention. However, there is also a downside to this.
The above percentage comes from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, which surveyed more than 49,000 developers from 166 countries. The figures show that although AI tools are widely used in software development, confidence in this technology lags behind.
According to the survey, 78.5 percent of developers use AI tools at least occasionally. Only 5.3 percent have not yet started, but intend to do so. However, only 3.1 percent of respondents trust the results of AI without reservation. Among experienced developers, that confidence drops to 2.5 percent, while novice programmers are slightly more positive at 6.1 percent, although that confidence remains limited.
AI solution not quite good enough
This reluctance has everything to do with the quality of the output generated. No less than 66 percent of respondents indicated that AI often comes up with solutions that are almost right, but cannot be used without modification. For 16 percent, it is unclear how or why AI code works. In addition, 45 percent say that debugging AI code takes more time than working with manually written code.
Complex tasks are a clear weak point for AI. Forty percent believe that AI performs poorly or very poorly on complicated tasks. Only 4.4 percent believe that AI can handle these types of challenges very well, while 17 percent do not use AI at all in such cases.
Human input indispensable
Despite the productivity promise of AI, human colleagues remain indispensable. When developers do not trust AI answers, 75 percent prefer to consult a person. For issues related to security or ethics, 62 percent seek human assistance, and 58 percent do so to truly understand something. The same tendency applies when learning best practices or when someone gets stuck.
Although AI is rarely used for fully autonomous programming, developers do like to use it for support. For example, 87 percent say they use AI as an alternative to traditional search engines, for example to find answers or understand new technologies. Only 17 percent use AI primarily to actually generate code. On the other hand, 29 percent have no intention of doing so at all.
The general attitude toward AI is mixed. Sixty percent of developers say they are (very) positive about AI tools. Twenty percent are indifferent or uncertain, and another 20 percent are outspokenly negative. In addition, 44 percent say they have little or no trust in AI, while only 31 percent have some trust.
Recent research by METR has already shown that AI tools do not make experienced developers more productive. Contrary to what many developers expect (and experience), the use of AI actually slows down development work by 19 percent in practice.