"My productivity is boosted, but ..." Demystifying Users' Perception on AI Coding Assistants

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Lyu, Yunbo, Yang, Zhou, Shi, Jieke, Chang, Jianming, Liu, Yue, Lo, David
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Lyu, Yunbo
Yang, Zhou
Shi, Jieke
Chang, Jianming
Liu, Yue
Lo, David
author_facet Lyu, Yunbo
Yang, Zhou
Shi, Jieke
Chang, Jianming
Liu, Yue
Lo, David
contents This paper aims to explore fundamental questions in the era when AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot are widely adopted: what do developers truly value and criticize in AI coding assistants, and what does this reveal about their needs and expectations in real-world software development? Unlike previous studies that conduct observational research in controlled and simulated environments, we analyze extensive, first-hand user reviews of AI coding assistants, which capture developers' authentic perspectives and experiences drawn directly from their actual day-to-day work contexts. We identify 1,085 AI coding assistants from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace. Although they only account for 1.64% of all extensions, we observe a surge in these assistants: over 90% of them are released within the past two years. We then manually analyze the user reviews sampled from 32 AI coding assistants that have sufficient installations and reviews to construct a comprehensive taxonomy of user concerns and feedback about these assistants. We manually annotate each review's attitude when mentioning certain aspects of coding assistants, yielding nuanced insights into user satisfaction and dissatisfaction regarding specific features, concerns, and overall tool performance. Built on top of the findings-including how users demand not just intelligent suggestions but also context-aware, customizable, and resource-efficient interactions-we propose five practical implications and suggestions to guide the enhancement of AI coding assistants that satisfy user needs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_12285
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "My productivity is boosted, but ..." Demystifying Users' Perception on AI Coding Assistants
Lyu, Yunbo
Yang, Zhou
Shi, Jieke
Chang, Jianming
Liu, Yue
Lo, David
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
This paper aims to explore fundamental questions in the era when AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot are widely adopted: what do developers truly value and criticize in AI coding assistants, and what does this reveal about their needs and expectations in real-world software development? Unlike previous studies that conduct observational research in controlled and simulated environments, we analyze extensive, first-hand user reviews of AI coding assistants, which capture developers' authentic perspectives and experiences drawn directly from their actual day-to-day work contexts. We identify 1,085 AI coding assistants from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace. Although they only account for 1.64% of all extensions, we observe a surge in these assistants: over 90% of them are released within the past two years. We then manually analyze the user reviews sampled from 32 AI coding assistants that have sufficient installations and reviews to construct a comprehensive taxonomy of user concerns and feedback about these assistants. We manually annotate each review's attitude when mentioning certain aspects of coding assistants, yielding nuanced insights into user satisfaction and dissatisfaction regarding specific features, concerns, and overall tool performance. Built on top of the findings-including how users demand not just intelligent suggestions but also context-aware, customizable, and resource-efficient interactions-we propose five practical implications and suggestions to guide the enhancement of AI coding assistants that satisfy user needs.
title "My productivity is boosted, but ..." Demystifying Users' Perception on AI Coding Assistants
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12285