Study Finds Developers 19% Slower With AI Tools While Feeling 20% Faster
A 2025 randomized trial by METR involving 16 experienced open-source developers found they completed coding tasks 19% slower when using AI tools, despite estimating afterward that they had worked 20% faster. The study ran 246 tasks across large, familiar codebases using Cursor Pro with Claude models, revealing a significant gap between perceived and actual productivity. A separate security dimension compounds the concern: a Snyk survey found nearly 80% of developers believe AI-generated code is more secure than human-written code, while Veracode testing across 100-plus models found 45% of AI code contained an OWASP Top 10 vulnerability. Researchers note the productivity study is limited in scope — only 16 participants on known codebases with early-2025 models — so results should not be broadly generalized. The consistent pattern across both findings is that developer confidence in AI output tends to outpace what measurement actually supports.
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