80% of developers find AI coding more addictive than helpful
A new Coddy Developer Survey found that four in five developers, 80%, say their use of AI has felt more like a dependence than an advantage.
Eighty percent of developers report finding AI coding tools more addictive than beneficial, according to a recent ZDNET article. While these tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor can boost coding productivity, they can also lead to exhaustion, workaholism, and burnout. Quentin Rousseau, CTO and co-founder of Rootly, described the experience as being unable to stop watching an AI agent refactor a module, attributing this to the addictive dopamine hits for correct outputs and adrenaline rushes for failures.
This new pace of work creates a feedback loop where developers continually request AI implementations, refactors, and optimizations, leading to an always-on, passive yet active state that feels like rest but is actually addictive. An AI-powered incident report company CTO found that 80% of developers experience habitual reliance on AI as dependence rather than an advantage.
Many developers continue coding with AI after hours despite meaning to stop, and 32% have put off sleep to keep working. The addictive nature of AI tools has also led to burnout, with 43% of developers programming in their free time, 39% staying up late to code, and 39% finding it harder to switch off from work. Additionally, while AI tools can accelerate feature development and increase the likelihood of raises and promotions, 51% of developers report higher burnout risks, and 45% are frustrated by AI answers that are almost correct but not quite, leading to a phenomenon known as verification debt, where developers must still verify the correctness, security, and maintainability of AI-generated code.
Written by urgent.news from ZDNet's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
