The future of AI in software development + Google leads in adoption

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This edition's main article is written by Nikita Solodkov and focuses on the future of AI in software development.

🎁 As always, look to the end of this newsletter for more resources and articles. Enjoy this blooming April edition! - Stathis Georgakopoulos

The future of AI in software development

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the world of modern software development, with use cases that range from data processing to generating code. In this blog post, we explore the future of AI in software development from the perspective of professionals involved in software development who hold leadership positions[1]. We first consider how their opinions differ from their counterparts in non-leadership positions and then move on to breaking down their beliefs by company size and region. These insights provide a window into how the adoption of AI is evolving across the industry and where beliefs may diverge depending on organisational and geographical contexts.

This blog post is based on data collected from over 4,500 technology professionals who answered questions about AI in the 28th edition of SlashData’s global Developer Nation Survey, which was fielded in Q4 2024.

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Most important future use cases for AI in software development according to technology leaders

When looking at the opinions of technology professionals in leadership roles and comparing them to those who work in non-leadership roles, we see a lot of broad similarities but also a selection of distinct differences. For instance, both groups show strong recognition of intelligent development assistants (30% vs 29%) and data processing, analytics and visualisation (26% vs 26%) amongst the most important future use cases of AI in software development.

In terms of differences, we find that technology leaders are significantly more likely than their counterparts to emphasise the importance of AI in the future of cybersecurity (25% vs 20%). While this is likely due to the differences between these two groups in terms of the scope of their responsibilities, the popularity of this particular use case points to AI playing a critical role in enhancing security against an ever-growing landscape of threats.

Technology leaders are also more likely to believe in the future importance of areas such as AI for DevOps (22% vs 18%) and predictive project management (16% vs 13%), highlighting their focus on optimising workflows and managing their teams. However, they are less likely than those in non-leadership roles to consider code generation (25% vs 29%) as important. This suggests that those who work closer to the code are more likely to see immediate benefits from automating coding tasks.

Most important future use cases of AI in software development by company size

On looking closer at what technology leaders think, we find an interesting set of patterns when segmenting their beliefs by company size. While certain trends remain the same, our findings also show that the future importance levels of some use cases are perceived very differently across different company sizes.

In terms of similarities, there is little variation in the perception of use cases, such as intelligent development assistants, when we consider company size. This suggests that technology leaders expect future AI tools targeting such use cases to be just as useful for developers who work for small businesses as those who work for larger firms. This also points to a potential shift in the dynamics of the developer workforce as a whole, where developers can take on more strategic roles and focus on the bigger picture while leaving routine coding tasks to AI.

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