---
title: "TechPulse Developer Survey 2026: AI Has Won, But Developers Have Mixed Feelings"
created: 2026-05-01 09:00
author: Maya Osei
keywords: developer survey 2026, AI tools, deskilling, developer productivity, programming languages, AI adoption
description: Our 2026 survey of 4,200 developers shows 78% use AI tools daily. The adoption is near-universal among younger developers — but the concerns about deskilling, quality, and dependency are louder than ever.
---

The 2026 TechPulse Developer Survey — our fifth annual — is our largest yet: 4,200 respondents from 73 countries, with balanced representation across company sizes, experience levels, and industries. We ran the survey for four weeks in March and April 2026.

The headline is stark: AI coding tools have reached near-ubiquitous adoption. 78% of respondents use AI coding tools daily, up from 73% in 2024. Among developers with five or fewer years of experience, the number is 91%. Among developers with fifteen or more years of experience, it is 61%.

The experience gap is telling. Younger developers have grown up with these tools and find it hard to imagine working without them. Experienced developers are more likely to use them selectively and more likely to express ambivalence about what they are doing to the field.

## The Adoption Numbers

**Daily AI tool usage by experience:**
- 0-2 years: 94%
- 3-5 years: 89%
- 6-10 years: 79%
- 11-15 years: 67%
- 16+ years: 61%

**Primary AI tool used:**
- GitHub Copilot (individual or enterprise): 38%
- Cursor: 29%
- JetBrains AI Assistant: 14%
- Claude in IDE/API: 8%
- Custom/self-hosted LLM integration: 11%
- Other: 7%
(Multiple selection allowed)

Cursor's rise is the most significant tool market shift in the past two years. It now rivals GitHub Copilot for daily use, having grown from 22% in 2024. The growth is driven by the AI-native editor's deeper integration: Cursor provides contextual awareness of entire codebases, not just the current file, and its "ask" features allow natural language interaction with the codebase at a level that Copilot's autocomplete model does not match.

## Satisfaction vs. Usage: The Widening Gap

The most striking finding in the 2026 survey is the divergence between usage rates and satisfaction rates — a gap we first noticed emerging in 2025 data and that has widened significantly.

**Usage vs. satisfaction for AI tools:**
- Daily users: 78%
- "Very satisfied" with AI tools: 31%
- "Somewhat satisfied": 44%
- "Mixed feelings": 18%
- "Primarily dissatisfied": 7%

"Mixed feelings" increased from 13% in 2025 to 18% in 2026. "Very satisfied" decreased from 38% to 31%. The primary satisfaction driver is productivity on certain tasks (very high satisfaction); the primary dissatisfaction driver is quality concerns and the accumulating sense of not understanding one's own code (increasing strongly).

## Concerns About Deskilling

For the first time, we included specific questions about deskilling — the concern that relying on AI tools may be degrading underlying programming skills. The responses were striking.

**"Using AI coding tools has reduced my ability to write code without them":**
- Strongly agree: 14%
- Somewhat agree: 31%
- Neither agree nor disagree: 22%
- Somewhat disagree: 24%
- Strongly disagree: 9%

45% of respondents agree to some degree that AI tools have reduced their ability to work without them. This is a form of dependency that most productivity tools do not produce — using a calculator does not impair arithmetic ability, but many respondents believe AI coding assistance has impaired their coding ability.

The agreement rate is highest among developers with 3-7 years of experience — the group that adopted AI tools early in their career and has now had them long enough to notice an effect. It is lowest among senior developers who adopted them selectively and latest.

Several open response comments crystallise the concern:

*"I started my career writing everything by hand. I can still do it if I must. My colleagues who started two years ago struggle to write a for loop without autocomplete. That is a problem I am not sure the industry is taking seriously."* — Software engineer, 14 years experience

*"I caught myself googling the syntax for something I should know by heart. I used to know it by heart. Copilot has been doing it for me for 18 months and I've forgotten."* — Backend developer, 6 years experience

*"I don't think I'm getting deskilled. I think I'm getting reskilled — the skills that matter are changing. Understanding code, architecture, and debugging still require the same skills as before. AI does the mechanical writing part. That seems fine to me."* — Principal engineer, 11 years experience

## Salary Impacts

We asked a new question in 2026: whether respondents believe AI tools have affected their salary leverage. The results are complicated.

**Effect of AI tools on salary leverage:**
- Increased leverage (AI makes me more valuable): 29%
- No effect on salary leverage: 43%
- Decreased leverage (AI reduces the premium on individual skills): 28%

A near-even split between "makes me more valuable" and "makes me less valuable." The interpretation of respondents who feel AI increases their leverage: AI multiplies the output of skilled developers, making experienced developers who can use AI effectively more valuable. The interpretation of respondents who feel AI decreases their leverage: AI reduces the value of junior programming work, compresses salaries for entry-level positions, and is beginning to reduce the perceived value of individual technical skill.

Both effects are probably real for different segments of the market. Senior developers who use AI effectively to multiply their output are commanding premiums. Entry-level programming positions are reported by respondents to be harder to find and less well-compensated than two years ago.

## What Developers Wish AI Could Do Better

We asked respondents what they wish AI coding tools did better. The top five responses (ranked by frequency):

1. **Better understanding of the existing codebase context** (cited by 64%): The frustration that AI suggestions do not account for project-specific patterns, architecture decisions, and constraints.

2. **More honest about uncertainty** (51%): The confident-but-wrong failure mode. Respondents want AI tools that say "I'm not sure" rather than generating plausible-sounding incorrect code.

3. **Better debugging assistance** (48%): The gap between AI's ability to generate code and its ability to diagnose problems in existing code remains frustrating.

4. **Security awareness** (38%): Respondents want AI tools that flag security concerns while generating code, rather than producing code that passes tests but has security issues.

5. **Better handling of legacy code** (35%): AI tools trained primarily on modern, idiomatic code struggle with legacy codebases, which is where many professional developers spend most of their time.

## The Burnout Picture

Burnout rates remain elevated: 39% of respondents describe significant burnout in the past 12 months, a slight increase from 38% in 2024. The causes have shifted: concern about AI's impact on job security has entered the top five causes of developer stress for the first time, alongside the previously dominant factors of meeting load, understaffing, on-call stress, and technical debt pressure.

The developers least likely to report burnout are those who feel they have agency over their AI tool usage — who use them selectively, understand their outputs, and maintain skills that do not depend on them. The developers most likely to report burnout related to AI are those who feel pressure to adopt tools they have concerns about, and those who feel the pace of AI-driven change in the field is making their existing skills obsolete faster than they can adapt.

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*Full methodology, raw data, and cross-tabulations available to TechPulse subscribers. Survey conducted March 17 – April 14, 2026. n=4,200 qualified respondents.*
