54% AI-Generated and Climbing — State of AI

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we're talking about the state of WebDev AI, the state of AI results.

There was a survey that was just completed about ten days ago. This is from Sasha Grief. He runs the state of WebDev API, the state of, like, JavaScript, the state of CSS, you know, all of these things that we do. And he's been running one for two years called the Scott of AI. And it's actually kinda interesting because it gives you I think it gives us a pretty good outlook as to, like, what are developers feeling, what are they actually using right now, how much of their job are they using it in. And we're gonna go through some of the best parts and sort of take a look at, like, what are people using, what what models are they using, how much of the code are they doing, all of that good stuff. My name is Wes. I'm here with mister Tolinski. How are you doing, Scott? Hey. I'm doing good. Doing good. Doing good.

Drought conditions in Denver, and we're getting a ton of rain right now. So I'm loving beauty. Having a great time enjoying the lovely rain.

Have you ever been to Hawaii, Wes?

No. No. I have not.

You must go. Oh, why you simply must go. I that was my favorite part about Hawaii Wes just that it rains all the dang time. I love that. Or at least in, Oahu, it does. So, yeah, big, big fan of the rain. Gotta love the rain, and I moved to a place that does not rain very often. So, gotta love that.

Real quick. Amsterdam.

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Well, let's talk about rain on some people's parades. We're gonna be talking about the state of AI in web dev. I know there are some people who are still holding out on the fact that, AI coding sucks and that it's never going to be any good. But from the results of this survey, AI coding has had a massive jump in terms of people who use it. And Yeah. I think we were speculating a little bit beforehand, obviously, that it's a little bit of becoming more normalized, but, also, it's gotten better over the past year, obviously.

But I I think people maybe are a little less eager to just say, f that. I'm not doing any AI coding at all.

As you can see, the percentage change here has been pretty massive.

Yeah. I think there's there's a mix of people realizing, oh, it actually is is kinda handy. I I could see that by if I post stuff on Blue Sky, I don't get absolutely annihilated.

Yeah.

Same. I've noticed that too. Yeah. I like, I I don't wanna be the, like like, a hype master.

I I feel like I have a pretty pretty good balanced take on this type of stuff, and it's certainly not a silver bullet. But I I don't think I think this is a a fairly monumental shift in our industry, and I don't think it's going away.

So it I think in the last maybe six months or so, we've seen a lot of the people who have been very against it, to say, ah, this this stuff is actually pretty helpful, or, oh, it it actually is is much better at at at what I wanna do right now. So there's certainly people on the other end of the spectrum which are full psychosis and, shipping all kinds of slop, but, there's a difference in the a day, baby.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I I I yeah. I I think it's interesting here. We see a big jump where, eighteen percent of respondents to this, they have written it seems like 75% of their code they write has been written with AI, and that's a big jump from the year prior than that. And and even higher than that is 19% of folks write, let's say, 85 to 90% of their code with AI. And and granted, the this survey, the results are gonna be skewed towards people who are writing code with AI. Right? It's the state of AI, and it's also going to be skewed towards the people who've responded to this survey. So, again, that's a 200 people, which in the

vast world of our industry is a small, small bit. But, again, this is a sampling. Right? And what would you say you're at right now? Because if you were to ask me, I'd just be like I, like, I don't know that I can put a number on that because it's just it's just, like, part of my work flow of Yeah.

It's not like I was like, oh, now I'm going to go to this other place and only write with AI. And and now I'm going back to my Node notepad plus plus in in hand coding. It's it's just, like, kind of a back and forth. And sometimes you're jumping in, and you're you're factoring something. You're reviewing something.

It's it's I don't I don't know where I would be at this. Probably at, like, a 70 Yeah. Six if I were were to guess. But, like, it's it's similar to, like, how much of your code is written with tab completion a couple years ago. Yeah. It's it's a a kind of a hard thing to to Scott guess there.

Well, mine is mine is closer to 90% Wes strictly because AI loves to write a shit ton of code when it does not need to.

It's like, they're both my life volume of code? My volume of code. It's it's just, like, pouring it in there even if it doesn't no. I I don't I don't know Node if we're talking about, like, effectively. I'm not quite sure. So I did just, like, fully hand Scott a project the other day from scratch, and it was great. I got a lot done. But, again, it it Wes probably more efficient than what the AI is writing. I I would say mine has definitely obviously increased from the year prior to this.

Mhmm. So, just like many of these things, I I think that number JS just going to keep going up. And, likewise, in terms of refactoring, 21% of respondents said that they're constantly refactoring their code with AI, which is a 10% jump from the last year. So, yeah, that's a big old jump right there. I think we're gonna see big old jumps on all this stuff from the sentiment in general from year to year. Now this is only the second year they've done this survey, so there isn't a ton of historic data. And I do have some critiques about the survey. Love, Sasha. I do think there's a number of things that would be very interesting that this survey is missing, which we'll get into those. Let's talk about models and providers.

So this includes both experience and sentiment, whether you've heard of it, used it, never heard of it, blah blah blah.

The first one being the most people have heard of and used it is chat GPT. And I think this encompasses all

OpenAI models, the way that this is listed. Yeah. It's weird that they label it chat GPT. And I I guess, like, some of the the most recent, OpenAI models are called GPT.

It and we gotta do a better job at naming these models. You know? It's it's such a confusing thing. But I I also do think there's quite a few people that are still just typing ESLint chat g p t, copy pasting the Node, and out in and out of their thing. I I don't think it's a large amount, but I think there's quite a few people doing it still.

Totally. Yeah. I I think there is. And that's honestly, it's a it's a it's an it's a less scary introduction to coding with AI. Yeah. Because you can say, is this you know, I just have this quick little question. Okay. I got a little snippet. Okay. It works or it doesn't work. Whatever. I can I can eyeball it from there? And and that is like a a big jump between that, and then you have the in editor tab completion stuff. And then you get into the world of just like, hey, chat. Make me an app. You know? I mean, there there's different levels to this in terms of what you're using. But as far as models go, people have, used it, and negative sentiment is 10% for chat GPT, which I I'm just going to chalk this up to all GPT models. Where Claude JS used it and has negative JS only 2%.

So a 10% negative Vercel Claude has a 2%. And, likewise, Claude also has that 46% positive. So people and this is this I'm gonna say this mirrors my experience as well.

I I in fact, when we did this, how how much do you rage at AI? I raged at Claude considerably less, which I feel like has to tell you something. Yeah.

If if you scroll down underneath this, there is out of the models mentioned, which of these does your company actually pay or do you or your company actually pay for? I think this is probably a better outlook of, like, with these, like, I've heard of it and have positive sentiment. I I think what happens is that people have, like, Wes. All of these people have clearly heard of Chattopilot, but, like like, what are people actually using right now? Mhmm. I think that this looks a little bit gives you a better look at it. Right? Like, 69, nice, percent using Claude.

Chad GPT. This is the Wes. It let's just say OpenAI. Right? Yeah. 50 people at OpenAI, 32% Gemini, 6% Copilot. So you're telling me that 32%

of people are paying for Gemini, but only 6% are paying for Copilot? That doesn't add up to me, don't you think? Well, it doesn't add up because Copilot is listed as an agent and assistant. So I Okay. These these are a write in where people are like, I use Copilot as my model.

Like

like, they don't know what model they're using. They're just using I'm using Copilot. Yeah. I don't think people actually know what any of this stuff is. I had I posted something the other day where I reverse engineered my lights, with Claude.

And the amount of comments I had from people saying, you could just use local models. And I said, which model could I use to do this? And they're all, like, Copilot or, using they were essentially just naming, like, free trials, which they have some for some reason, think that that's just like a local model. Like, I think people are a lot more confused of as to the how this stuff actually works.

Yeah. I I think that is evident if you look at this data further because Yeah. You'll see that under models,

Microsoft Copilot, also heavy write in, and then Kiro is a heavy write in, Kiro as a model. So Yeah. Doesn't even have a model yet. I I bet they'll probably be releasing one in the next month or so. Like, they they had this big thing couple months ago where they're like, we now can train on your you they had, like, a big banner at the top of GitHub being like, opt out if you don't want us to train on your models. I bet they're gonna roll out their own version pretty soon. But they don't or as of recording, they don't have their own model.

I I think this does illustrate something interesting beyond the data here JS that people don't know what a model is. Oh.

Yeah. The app is the model, I guess.

The app is the model. The files are in the computer.

Yes. Depots are in the computer.

Let's talk about agents then because I think this leads in nicely to that Wes, again, Copilot seems to be the most, used, but not the most loved where it has a 13% sentiment.

I a negative sentiment. I think one of the most interesting things in this is a little bit of bubble breaking. You Node? We hear about things like Devin on Twitter all the time. And according to respondents of the survey, most people have not heard of it. 42% of people have not heard of it. And the people who have heard of it don't like it. 14% of it have a negative sentiment about it, where only 2% have heard of it and have a positive sentiment, and only point 5% have used it and like it. So Devon is not either either JS outside of this bubble,

or people who have actually tried it aren't aren't a fan. Oh, yeah. I think there's gonna be two things going forward with, like, what do people use this. First, is it included in your whatever you're paying for, your Microsoft three sixty five, your Google Workspace. Like, I think that those guys are gonna have a huge leg up because it simply is just part of the package, and then they pay extra for it. And it's integrated with absolutely everything. They don't go looking for another tool. And I think that's that's partially why Claude and and Anthropic right now are are gunning so hard for, like, the, like, office thing because those enterprise contracts are are massive.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's evident here by Copilot being number one in terms of the most experience and then Cloud Code being number two in the most experience.

Crazy enough, 34% positive, sentiment from Cloud Code over the 21 positive on Copilot, and then Node, OpenAI Node, is only 16% of those who who have used it like it.

Wes Yeah. What's wild to me is that the cursor JS not even in this list anywhere.

Yes.

Yes.

Node is in here.

I I didn't even know that was a still a still a thing. You know? And I I have thoughts about this, Wes, and and we'll talk about that too. I I have I have thoughts about that because if if you get into the other coding agents, you'll see OpenCode was a write in for 389 people. OpenCode is very highly used from people. But It's they have, like, 10,000,000,

something like that, monthly or daily active users, monthly active users. It's insane how many people are using it. A cursor a write in as well and pie a write in. I think

that Sasha needs to, I think, maybe grow with the industry here and that open Node, Cursor, Py, Kiro, all of these things need to be in the survey because yeah. I yeah. Even Py has a decent usage. It's it's nowhere near these other bad big boys like quad Node. But Node is a major player, and Cursor is a major player.

It's a he's a he's a play a play a.

Yeah. And and maybe I think maybe that's part of of maybe Kushner's problem is that people don't see it as a a coding agent.

They see it as, like, an an editor.

And and that's why Courser has been pushing so hard on, like, moving away from their, like, their IDE into, like, their, like, agent interface, which absolutely everybody is doing. You know? You got your projects on the left. You got your chat in the middle. You know? That's the same same UI everybody is building right now, but I think that's that's part of their problem is people see them as only an Node.

When in reality, it's like, Crystal's actually a pretty good deal, and you still get access to you get access to all the models. You get to try them all, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

I've been personally, Wes, what let this is a good to this is a good time for, us to talk about what we're using. Yeah. What what's your current usage of choice? Do you mind just changing all the time?

I'm probably fifty fifty split between Claude and Cursor.

And Like Claude Node or Claude the app?

No. Cloud Cloud Code. Yeah.

And then the other split is is probably Cursor.

I do dip into Node fairly often as well because I have a ChatGPT TypeScript, and just kinda get a just get a feel for for how it works. And I do use the Node models via Cursor probably more often because I still I I know that nobody likes having an Node anymore, but I still find it nice to be able to, like, click on something and see the code, that that's being generated. I still like that UI the best. So that's kinda my my go to. But then I also like the, like, the terminal experience quite a bit still.

As much as I say I don't like two e's for just quick stuff needing to to, I don't know, like like FFmpeg, resize a whole bunch of stuff, or download a whole bunch of videos, or, upgrade and install. You know? I just clog dangerously skip permissions, and I I find that that's one of my favorites as well.

Yeah. I've been using I've been using, clog code for, like, almost everything these days. And and that's, like, in the past couple of weeks. I've, like, really landed on cloud code to the point where I did cancel my, chat g p t subscription. I've gotten codecs to be just an absolute slog to work in. And I know some people really like codecs because it's, like, more, exact.

Yeah.

But I just I I just did not like any of the results of the front end code it was writing ever. Yeah. And and, like, to me, that was such a thing that I just was so annoyed with. Like, it was hot potatoing data from function to function to function to function. It was writing so much unnecessary code that I was just getting annoyed with it. And I'm I don't have that same experience with with Claude, and and I feel like maybe my Claude code setup is a little bit better. And then I'll also dip into, I have a a a Copilot TypeScript.

So I'll use Copilot in OpenCodeNow and in Py. I'll use Yeah. Copilot models in both of those.

And I'll use Py if I want to have something just run on my system at large, and I'm pretty much using cloud code only on my, like, in my projects. And then, like, if I wanna say, hey. Go to my NAS and delete a 100 files. I'm gonna do that in pi.

So, I just because I I have access to those Copilot models in pi is pretty permissive on that kind of stuff. It is it's, like, where cloud code is gonna be like, you want me to read the file that you told me to read, please? Let me read it. And I'm just like, I'm not I threw I threw Claude on my Synology,

and, like, the one thing that I hate doing is updating Docker images. Same. Oh, same. I've got jelly fin on a Docker image. Damn.

And I for some reason, I every time I need to update that thing, I'm just like, what do I do? And, like, because there's there's data that's been, like, mapped. Obviously, with Docker, you can map things. You don't keep the files in the Docker image. You keep them on your file system, and you you sort of map them there. But so many times, I've accidentally nuked all of my, like, library data, and I've had backups, but it's annoying. And now I just tell Cloud Code to update the thing, and and then it rips on it. And I Node that probably makes a lot of people mad Yeah. That, every time I post about that, they're like, just use x, y, and z. I'm like, I need to touch this thing, like, twice a year, and I always forget what to do. And now I just type in the box, and it it works great.

Yeah. I have that same thing with Image. Image, I run on my NAS, and, like, I don't know. The updating process for it absolutely sucks.

So because they don't have Synology they don't have, like, an official Synology thing, so it's like, you Scott duplicate the container and do the Yeah. I don't wanna do all of that.

I it's funny that you run cloud code on your NAS, where what I do is I just have my local agent on my laptop have SSH.

Okay.

It's Yeah. Is that better? I have no idea. Is there any downside to that? Like, what do you just tell it to go SSH in? And, like I

I just have all my stuff set up, my key set up and whatever. Everything's on my, Tailscale network, and it's just like, oh, I'll just SSH into it. Yeah. And it doesn't it's not like the password is getting passed ESLint.

No.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Maybe I need that as well.

Yeah. But who knows? I'll give that a shot. Cool. Who knows? Okay. Let's get back to the survey here. So let's look at paid agent usage, what people are actually paying for in terms of agents. We talked about models and paid usage. 58% of the people who respond to this are paying for cloud code, whether that is through a max plan or through tokens.

We have 42 are paying for Copilot, and they're about to be paying more sense. Whole lot more.

Did you see that, like so they have, like, a Copilot has, like, a new dashboard that shows you, like, how much you would be paying if you were actually paying per token.

And CJ was telling me that his his cost was outrageous in terms of, like, how he he thinks he's he thinks people are in for a major rude awakening in terms of because it was, like, $60,000 or something crazy.

Seriously? That's insane. And I I saw, Peter Steinberger, the, creator of Open Claw. He had burned a million and a half dollars worth of tokens in a month or something. Nuts like that. Like That guy's And and, obviously, that guy that guy JS trying to figure out what coding would look like if there were no there was no, like, cost.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, whether the cost for that will ever come down, like, it would it would have to come like, even it's $60,000.

You know? Like, even if that were to come down 60 x.

Yeah.

Yeah. Bucks a month. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of dough.

I know.

Further things, 24% are paying for OpenAI Node.

5% are paying for JetBrains. And then, yeah, the cursor needs to be on here. Four percent. JS on here. Oh, it was Node write in. They I don't understand how it was not in here because a year ago, Cursor was arguably more popular than it is right now.

Right. Yes. I know. That's So Agreed.

And then also, like reflects it. Right. Node, even, like, Zed or something isn't on here. No. I don't I don't know people are paying for Zed. I I don't know, but that is, like, their whole paid product. Okay. Let's get into other tools here.

It's no surprise that the primary amount of, the primary language that people are writing with AI is TypeScript. I'm surprised to see JavaScript at 77%.

Like, I'm writing TypeScript. I haven't touched a JavaScript file in a billion years at this point.

No. It's But I I think, again, those are probably people being like, well, TypeScript is JavaScript, so I'll check that off. But, like, I I I'm at a point where you don't even have to tell it to write JavaScript, you know, or you don't have to tell it to write TypeScript. It just knows. You know? Like, I haven't had it accidentally write JavaScript without types in a long time.

Yeah. Totally.

Python 41% makes a lot of sense. Python is still big. I'm I'm happy to see the, the shift to more JavaScript. Because, like, when we first started with a lot of this AI stuff, it was all Python all the way down.

Yeah. And it's still in the reptile

major shift towards TypeScript.

11% in Rust, which Rust is actually, I will say, pretty good to write in AI because of, the build system and everything or the, just the general nature of the Rust language Mhmm. I think lends itself well to this.

But, yeah, HTML and CSS being in here as write ins, I don't know. I don't know how to feel about that. I mean, they're they're programming languages. Whatever. Who who cares? I don't wanna have that discussion.

Image generation, most people are using Node banana in the Just Chat GPT second on here.

What do you pick up for image generation? I know you you tried a few things. Yeah. I

have been I was nano banana for quite a long time.

I do dip into chat GPT's image generation every now and then.

And then I recently started paying for MidJourney again. Like, I was, like, very early on MidJourney customer.

And and then I I can't I Vercel it, and then I I kinda went back to it because it has, like, has, like, the best tools. Like, it's almost like Photoshop.

Like, there's layers and things like that.

And I don't like, I I I'm trying to think, like, like, what I actually use it for. Obviously, for Merch Mad CSS, we made those hilarious images of everybody in, like, nineties basketball thing. I've used it to generate some icons here and there. There's often some, like, I use it more for, like, assets. You know? Like, if I need, like, flames if I'm doing, like, a a thumbnail or something like that and I need some, like, flames Yeah. Like, more of my like like, I used to just Google image search for things, and then I would find the, like, stupid free pic with the fake transparent background.

And then, you know, I I just I'm so Google image search for stealing photos is awful now. So I now I I just reach for, for something like midjourney or whatever just to get assets.

Yeah. Benjourney. It looks pretty great. I I reach, yeah, pretty much, I pretty much reach for Node banana for generating assets or, or just Chad GPT for assets. And I've been doing the same thing primarily. Like, for the phases podcast that Courtney does, I was using, like, beach photos for her thumbnails just because, like, that's her vibe.

And she wanted something, like, nice and calming, so we were using waves.

And, yeah, finding good royalty free photos of waves was annoying. I just now I'm just going, give me give me 20 waves photos that Yarn, like, calm waves and and pristine beaches. And it's like, okay. Here they are. That was so much endlessly easier.

It's it's so true. They're just those websites that, like, bait you on images are have absolutely ruined, the, like, the process of of finding images. So, yeah, it's cool. I don't know Node I keep paying for it. I really like using, OpenRouter for a lot of these image models because you simply just pay for what you want. Like, when we were doing the the mad CSS, I I racked up, like, probably $40.50 dollars worth of usage on these image things. And I I don't mind that because then, like, there's months where I don't generate anything, and you don't have to pay for whereas, like, MidJourney, they don't have an API. JS simple as you gotta pay the, like, $11 a month. And I think that's where a lot of these models are gonna be going, Wes they don't want people piecemealing.

Eleven Labs is like this as well. They don't want people just like, oh, I'm gonna take a sip here. I'm gonna generate twelve seconds worth of audio, and then I paid my 18¢ for that. And now I'm not gonna use it for the next twenty years.

They want you paying, like, $19 a month, and you have to go ahead and cancel if you don't want it, and then they'll delete all of it. Unfortunately, I think that's where a lot of these are gonna go. And I bet a lot of the big models out there like, I bet we'll see it from Claude, and I bet we'll see this from OpenAI. They're probably gonna release something where you there's gonna be no API for it. You simply have to use it via their harness.

Yeah. Yeah. I I the the open router stuff is really interesting.

Yeah. Because Wes it just even, like, yesterday, the Grok Imagine showed up on there? It it's 5¢ per image.

So 5¢ per image gen, very the, the open router. And then there's also stuff on here I haven't used, like, a ProVector ProVector SVG craft in terms of, like, an image gen for vector specific image gen. I haven't used that stuff, and it looks pretty pretty sick, actually. I did some of the, like, the playgrounds, and it looked good. I also have a replicate.com,

where I throw every now and then, I'll throw $20 in it because they have a very good vectorization Node, and you just use it as you need as you need it. Right? Every now and then, I'll have something that needs to be vectorized, and they just you can just upload it via the website. And then, like, you don't have to use our API keys or anything. You just use the the GUI on the website. Also, the Grok image one is actually very good, and it's fast, super fast.

And when you're trying to, like like, spitball on ideas for things, I find that that's actually been very good. Yeah. Yeah. OpenRouter. Shout out to OpenRouter.

Video generation, we don't need to get too much into this. It's been super related. Wes, let's talk about this. Like, what

I see no purpose for having AI generated videos aside from, a pig jumped like, the pig is doing high jump or something like that. Like, those funny videos, every now and I'll get I'll get a little laugh. But I don't I don't see the the actual maybe Hollywood is wants this type of stuff, you know, like b roll, like a maybe that would be it. Like a like a instead of having to, like, fly a drone over New York City, you could just generate it. But, like, I just think a lot of this AI generated stuff is just that's a lot of money to spend on some I've seen no good come of it. And in fact, I've seen a lot of awful stuff come from us. Every all the boomers on Facebook are getting duped all day long.

Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. I I don't I don't have any any use case be for that as well.

So I I just don't get it. The next one is going to be app generation.

So v zero, 12% of respondents have used v Deno. 9% have used Lovable.

I I again, these aren't tools that I these are, like feels like these are, like, noncoder tools.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's it's interesting to hear it. I think in the early days, these things were absolutely blowing up.

But now when I hear from, like, my non coder friends, often, all hear is, hey. Did you know Gemini can make games? Someone sent me a like, a friend sent me a message the other day, and they said, hey. Is this code any good? They're they're asking me, like, I know I made a game. And it's interesting to see, like, where people are coming at. Also, I think a lot of the, like, early hype on these things was very paid off.

It's the, like, amount of people on TikTok or whatever being like, hey. I made this thing unlovable or whatever. I think a lot of those people were were being paid because you don't see them talking about it anymore.

Yeah. I know. I know lovable really burnt a ton of goodwill too with that whole, we meant to we meant to expose all your data. No. Wait. Never mind. No. We didn't. You know? Yeah. That yeah.

The code review tools are interesting here. 14% of people who are using CodeRabbit.

13% of people are using Copilot, which I'd assume they're just prompting Copilot, Cloud Code, etcetera. So people aren't using, like, code review tools even if they responded to their, saying that. And the ones that do actually show up are mostly write ins, like, BugBot, and then CenturySeer has 15 write ins. So, again, I don't know if people are actually I I think this whole section is mostly write ins, so they need some actual code review tools.

And SEER is a great it's a great time to talk about. SEER from Century is, well, it it gives you the root cause analysis of any of the issues in your code and has access to, with your Century account. It has access to the whole context around why something broke and how to fix it. And Sierra Mhmm. Is really super cool, but there's actually some other interesting code review tools from Century.

I don't know if you've seen, Warp, Wes. Have you seen Warp? I have. Warden is a a new tool from Century that I think is really cool. Also, they got this sick landing page. Have you seen this thing? Yeah. You click and a bug shows up, and then a little laser comes and zaps the bug. This is so stinking cool. I love this landing page. Oh my god. This is great.

And what this thing does is it, it's a good tool to have in your stack that, really is watching your code base for all kinds of things to fix it, to find issues automatically, whether that is code review or security review or dependency review, test coverage, those types of things.

And it will alert you in your GitHub actions.

It is really pretty sick.

The way I like to think about this is it's kind of being like hooks for finding issues in your code before you push them. If you were using something like Warp, it might find, potential security holes before that you actually merge Yeah. Something.

It's really pretty cool. Their their little example up here is a Warden finds a SQL injection from unsanitized input possibility and even gives you a suggested fix directly from your GitHub issues.

Man, I I this is a tool that I'm instantly going to add to all my stuff, and not just because it's a Century tool and, I work for Century, but because this is the type of thing that I think we we we all be needing right now with the Yeah. Current security landscape.

You know what is one that everybody needs to add is error handling.

So often, AI write Node where it doesn't handle the error properly Totally. Or it will simply just, like, put a, like, a a label somewhere on there that something happened. And just having, like, consistent proper error handling techniques so that, obviously, the error gets sent off to Sentry, but you also show something to your user as to what happened or or be able to handle it, and and the thing will fix itself in a lot of these cases.

That needs to be added to absolutely every code base that people are doing because there's so many times you're just using an app and nothing happens or, like,

something went wrong. You know? Totally. And and and perfect tool for that is Scott.

This is with all this cool stuff Century's been shipping.

Spotlight does exactly that. It's basically like local Sentry, and you get access to, all the errors in your app, especially in development, not just in production. So as you're going, your AI is having access to all of the errors in a way that it actually has access to solve them and then can use, the actual c SEER AI tools to assist in debugging and fixing. These are the types of things, again, that as we shove more and more AI code out, we need automated and better tools to find our bugs, solve them, and Yes. Potentially alert us to security issues. So sign up to the Sanity team for actually, being so, future thinking.

So okay. Let's get into the survey back into the survey now.

So how are people actually using AI in their coding? 90% use it for, cogeneration specifically, 68% up from 8% before. So a 60% increase use it for code review and assistance.

That makes no sense. How how the hell did that go from 1% to 68%?

Write in before. Maybe it was a write in before. Yeah. Yeah. 68% use it for learning and research, 67% debugging, and then you get into much smaller 37% use it for image generation. And, I don't even see video generation on here. So,

yeah. So I get Wes. It's a long industry for this. Yeah. Totally. Yes. Agreed.

Next one we have here is personal expenses. Like, how much do you spend on AI tools every single month? 40% are saying $0.

So there's quite a few people that are just getting by on the free trials, and I think they're hopping from one trial to another trial. I think the probably the days of those days are very limited, and I would probably say in the next six months or so that we're not gonna have those free plans or even those cheap plans anymore. Like, right now, what you're seeing is everybody is saying, f u cloud Node. I'm going to codex Wes I can use it a lot longer. I was like, yeah. That's just because codex, it's like a game of chicken right now. It's like, who can lose more money longer? And Mhmm.

If you think that, like, codex is gonna be like that forever, they're happily taking you over right now. We're like, hey. Come to us. We'll give you better limits. We won't. We'll let you use it with other harnesses. We'll let you do everything, and people are coming to them. But you think that's not gonna happen with OpenAI? It's it's for sure gonna happen, and the the prices are gonna go up relatively soon. Yeah. They are. Really. Just trying to get you to use it. But let's take a look. 10% of people are spending between a 100 and $500, and then

That's up to 9%.

6% of people are using more than $500. And I guarantee you, if you're using AI every single day, like, the results of these are saying, you are using thousands of dollars a month, on this type of stuff so that the the disconnect between what people are actually paying or willing to pay and how much compute they're actually using is absolutely insane.

Yeah. It's insane.

I would be surprised.

I mean, well, I actually, here's what I the the the fact that zero went 13% down and a 100 to 500 went 10% or 9% higher than the year before, I think you'll see that that that I think you're gonna see those numbers kind of invert. People are paying a lot of money. It's getting more expensive, and more people are finding it to be useful. So, therefore, they're going to continue to spend more money on it.

Yes.

I think let let's take a look at local AI because local AI, often a conversation topic. 20% are not interested.

20 or 20% of people don't use it and are not interested.

31% of people are don't use it but are interested, and then 49% of people are saying they use local AI. I think that is not accurate. There's no way that's accurate because, look, what, are people running their own rigs, their own GPUs? What, are they running the crappiest models possible? They aren't. I don't think they are. I think people don't understand what local AI is. I don't think so either.

Yes. Like, you can use, yeah, you can use Ollama and and whatever. But if you're using this to code, maybe for background images, if it's slower but still good.

I I think if if you're worried about like, people are using local AI if they're worried about either cost or privacy. Right? And I think a lot of the cost people have have moved to Kimmy, DeepSeek, a lot of these, like, cheaper models. And I bet that that's where we're gonna see a lot of people go in in the next six months JS the real prices for these things start to come out. We're gonna people are gonna be figuring out how to get, like, decent results out of these significantly cheaper models or the models that are I don't know if they're they're cheaper because they're they've been made like that or they're just, again, being heavily subsidized to to get people to hop over. And then the, like, the privacy people as well. Like, I would love to have a rig on my desktop that I could just run all this stuff locally. Brother. Yeah. But, like, it's I don't think people realize how beefy of a a system you need. And CJ has a video on it. Right? You gotta have a Yeah. Pretty sick setup. You got he ESLint thousands and thousands of dollars on on his rig, and it's like it's it's good, but it's, like, nowhere near what, the things that we're used to using, all these cloud and OpenAI models.

Yeah. I think that's the whole thing is you get used to the cloud OpenAI AI models where you just type it in and it does its thing. You're going to have a rough transition. I think the benefit comes in from using these smaller models to do smaller tasks and then really getting into the systems of it Wes, alright, this one is doing the the to do list, and this one is doing the the prep, and this is writing the ADR, and this one is reviewing it. And then you have your big, beefy, Frontier models doing the actual coating, but that is a lot of stinking work, to just to to I mean, it depends on what you're using it for. My homey, Topher, who's been on the show before, he has two DGX sparks, from NVIDIA, and he does all of his OpenClaw stuff with those. All of it.

So

And what does he use OpenClaw for, though? Like, because that certainly, you can do things like summarize a note or Right. It's it's for the system.

The programmatic stuff. Yeah.

Like, moving files, categorizing things, taking a voice note and and putting it into a to do app. Right? That kind of stuff. You don't need, like, these these frontline models. That stuff worked great three years ago with what we had then. Totally.

Yes. Yes. Totally. So, again, yeah, local AI, interesting thing. But, again, yeah, I don't think these people are really using it like they say they are. One thing I wanted to hit on is this next section, which is the, risks and pain points, job displacement being the largest, thing inside of, AI risks, which, yeah, I think that's a big a big point of, I would say, stress amongst developers, but I don't think we've truly seen the end results of this just yet. We hear about layoffs all the time, but I think companies who have done good hiring practice from the start, they're still hiring. I mean, like, Century is still hiring all the time, and they haven't done any layoffs. And they're you Node, it's like companies like that that are, that are using AI heavily, but still, you know, finding a way to make their employees effective with it.

Military use of AI, 45%.

Yeah. Environmental impact, 40%.

Yes. Concerning?

Also concerning, AI Scott takeover, very concerning. Negative cognitive impacts, yes. Have you experienced any negative cognitive impact impacts from people that you might be entitled?

Yeah. When's the class action of, like Yes. It ruined my brain.

Yes. I know. It yes.

Yes. I only think percent think rising AI costs are a problem.

That's kinda interesting as well. But, like, you you'll also hear, like like, people's companies are simply, like, like, mandating them. Like, when we were at GitHub Vercel last year, they announced, like, the ability to track how much people are using.

And right then and there, we're like, yeah. This is what like, people want their employees using this stuff to to move faster and to be more productive. And you're seeing a lot of people who are just like, no. I don't wanna use this, partially because I don't trust it. I don't want my job to be replaced with it, and partially because they just don't like. A lot of people don't really wanna learn how to how to use this effectively. Right? Like, I think there's a lot of people have simply just used the chat g p t, typed into the box, had it spit out, did 18 pages worth of garbage, and they're like, that's not very good. It sucks. And they don't see the the actual benefit. You know? Like, give somebody who just is, like, a chat GBT casual listener, give them, like show them how powerful, like, a Claude agent can be. I think that they may be may change their mind.

Yes. I I I do think there is a tremendous gap there.

Now the highest thing that people say is a pain point is hallucinate hallucinations and inaccuracies.

Yeah. That's par for the course. I think the there's a a meme that shows, like, pre AI development, and it has, like, you're building a scooter, and it's like, here's the wheel. Here's the other wheel. Here's the base. Here's the thing. And you put them all together sequentially, and then it's, like, post AI development or using AI development.

And it's like some monstrosity, and then you're refining it down into the actual scooter. So, like, I think people who aren't used to this stuff, they don't realize that you almost start with, like you start with this jumbled mess and you refine it down rather than you start small and refine up to, you know, code quality or higher things. But the hallucinations and inaccuracy, yeah. I mean, that's the name of the game JS is trying to reduce these things whether it's through deterministic means, like linters and, things like fallow or whatever.

Mhmm. You know, skills to help it along.

MCP, whatever, code quality being the second highest things, the second highest pinpoint.

Yeah.

Yeah. Obviously, I think these are big things.

Ethical concerns, a little blip on the pinpoint, but I don't think that belongs inside of ethical concerns.

Okay. Here here's, here's one thing I wanted to touch on. The happiness of people who have been people's happiness with AI has gone from 3.3 out of five to 3.4 out of five. So people who have taken the survey are generally more happy with AI than they were ever so slightly than the year before, which tracks, I think I mean, how could it not? The models have gotten better. The tools have gotten more mature. Everything's gotten a little bit better. I'm I'm surprised the jump isn't a little bit higher. But, again, 3.4 out of five is pretty high already in terms of what I would expect here from this survey. What I think would be more interesting than how much do you like AI, one through five, would be getting into the psychological stuff here. Right? Like, I I think about this all the time. And, maybe, I I've been thinking, Wes, this would be a good episode to bring Courtney on, to talk about psychology here. How does coding with AI make you feel? How stressed out are you with working Wes with AI? I'm more stressed when working AI because I don't have as much control over it. I'm like, do the thing I want you to do.

How how long are they making fragmented?

Yes. Fragmented. I would say yeah.

Developers are probably less happy. Like, you you can make a lot more things, and, like, I certainly have this problem JS that they I have a million ideas. My brain is always buzzing. And, like, having a box that can actually make these put these things into reality,

that's that's a bit of a problem for me. It's brutal for my mental health because I'm like, yeah. I'm feeling like, oh, I gotta keep this going. What did I I installed a a caffeine app on my computer, so now I can shut it and have my agents run while I my computer's shut. Oh, man. Not healthy.

That's not healthy at all. Here's another question, though. Node, like, is software getting better?

No. I mean, maybe it will, but, like, I who can use any single thing on their device and be like, oh, I have to say that. From, like, a user point of view

of, like, stuff I use every single day.

Like like, there's certainly lots of, like, workflows in my life that are a lot better and easier.

Of things that I use every single day, my day to day things, has that gotten better? You know? Like, my I always love to talk about, like, FreshBooks.

FreshBooks was this beautiful thing that I love to use at RESPONSE or the podcast for many years, and I loved it. And over the last, like, five years, the quality has just gone downhill, and there's been no features, and nothing ever works. And then I'm just, like, looking at it being like, shouldn't this be way better given that we have this magical genie that you could just rub and it fixes all of our problems?

Shouldn't it be better? Shouldn't it be better? It's something I ask myself all the dang Yeah. Time. And it's not yeah. Like, in in too many of these companies are just spending time just shoving AI into their product to make it worse. I mean, Notion. Oh my god. Notion is just a nightmare to use sometimes. So yeah.

I I don't I don't know. Yeah. I don't think things have gotten any better, at least, not from my perspective.

Node things have. Some things have gotten just perfectly, but I think those are teams that always care and do care about craft. So I I I think it's, yeah, it's interesting.

But, yeah, I would love to see this survey include those types of of of things if we're getting into, you know, how do you how do you feel about it? How does it make you feel? The opinion section of this is the last one. 72% of respondents now consider AI to be an integral part of their workflow.

72% of respondents.

That is high, folks, for the people who are saying it's useless.

72%.

Do you think 72% of people are being forced by their company? Because I know Node will get comments being like, well, their companies are making them use a 100% of the people leaving comments on this video.

Yeah. But, like, you you're telling me that the 28% of people don't find it as an integral part of the workflow? I guess that that's fair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I'm fair. Like, is that like, are the like, maybe those people are, like they're certainly using it, but maybe they don't find it that it's a an absolute Yarn. Integral part of their workflow. Integral. Integral. Being the keyword here. Yes.

Interesting.

There a lot we hear a lot of talk about bubble.

Many respondents think that we're currently in an AI bubble, but they also realize AI is here to stay even after it eventually pops.

37% agree with that. 33% strongly agree with that.

Very small percentage of people disagree with that and strongly disagree with that. So, yeah, I think we're seeing some of that bubble in just terms of the cost that we we've talked about,

the Scott exploding, and it's gonna get more more interesting. What JS it what does it look like when the the bubble pops, though? That's that's my in question here JS that, like, I certainly think everything is chaotic right now, and everybody's trying to figure out Yep. Like, what it looks like. And there's a lot of money being thrown around. I certainly think we are in a bubble, but it I don't think that, like, when that pops, I don't think that we're gonna go back to to what the way it was for this chiseling into rock. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just the the I think the way that we work has significantly been changed, and there's I don't think there's any returning back to to where we were.

Yeah. The genie's, out of the bottle. Your Genie's out of the bottle. Yeah. Yep. I okay. So I what are your thoughts here, Wes? Because I have some thoughts on the survey specifically. So, here's what I would love to see. Hey. I wanna know what you would wanna see from the improvement of this survey Vercel. But I know Sasha, he he's a great dude. Here's what I would love to see this survey, improve on for the next one.

I I think it's missing a huge part of the actual AI landscape.

It's missing things like skills. It's missing things like MCP.

What are the most impactful AI features that people are actually using? What are you actually using? It's more than just model or agent. There's what skills do you think are effective? Do you think skills are more effective than MCP, or do you think sub agents? Are you using swarms?

Are you using, like, those types of things? Run the Node? Wes.

How like, are you monitoring it? Because, like, are you are you just firing off several agents at once and not monitoring? Are you coming back to it? How are you kicking them off? Are you doing it from your phone? I think that this survey missed a lot of like yeah. It's interesting that people are using OpenAI versus cloud and and whatever. But I think, like, how people's workflows have changed in the last six months have has been the most interesting part of this landscape and and how people are tackling different types of issues, you know, like PI auto research.

Absolutely Phenomenally interesting tool of, like, these are new these are new ways to solve problems.

Not like a lot I think a lot of the survey was simply just like, we used to write code by hand.

Now we are having the bot write the code for us and not just like how how are the new,

problems being solved here? I think that that's the more interesting thing. Like like, how are you rigging up your your your whole thing? What's MCP, the skills, all of that good stuff? Yeah. I I totally agree. Yeah. I I even hear, like, strategies would have been useful. Like, what are people actually are you using ARD documents? Are you using just markdown files for documents? Are you throwing a whole docs thing? Are you using, like, a task manager or something like beads? Like, these are the types of things that I think need to be in the survey if it's going to, be useful.

So, Sasha, I I I hope you, take this criticism as critique. I think you, this is only the second time they've done this survey. There's probably a lot more that can be learned from this. So I would love to see the survey be a little bit more representative of how people are actually working in AI beyond just, you know, opening up their Versus Node and and using Copilot or or whatever cloud. Like, that that's why I wanna say, are people

are developers actually ripping three agents at once, or is it just, like, us who are are at it? I I would I would like to see it. Are people actually using MCP servers and skills, or are most people just simply opening up, typing in the box, reviewing the output? You Node? There's there's a big difference between that, and I'd like to see some real world stats on it. How much code do you review by hand? How much code are are you actually reading that your agent writes? Those types of things. Yes. Absolutely.

Cool. Well, do you have anything for us before we get out of here, Wes?

That's it.

That's it.

Thanks for tuning in. Peace. Peace.