Last updated: January 26, 2026 by the editorial team
Author's): Ahmed M. Abdelfattah
Originally published in Towards Artificial Intelligence.
16 programmers. 246 real tasks. One randomized controlled trial. The results contradict everything the vendors claim. and everything that developers believe in.
Same study. The same developers. The same tasks. Three numbers that shouldn't appear together.
The article discussed a study by METR that found that developers using AI tools believed they were faster, even though measured results showed a productivity slowdown of 19%. Initial expectations were for a 24% increase in speed, compared to a perceived increase of 20%, which highlighted a significant difference in perception from reality – 39 percentage points. The study's findings suggest that developers may feel more productive due to the enjoyment of AI tools rather than the actual results, leading to misleading assessments of the effectiveness of AI in software development.
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