There has been so much progress in AI tools for software engineering in recent years. When you see a paper based on a...

There has been so much progress in AI tools for software engineering in recent years. When you see a paper based on a survey from more than a year ago, you immediately wonder how those surveys would go, if repeated now, with people using the current state of the art. A key insight is the productivity paradox: AI tools can both enhance and hinder productivity, depending on interaction patterns, cognitive demands, and situational conditions. This duality underscores the need for sociotechnical models that avoid assuming uniformly positive effects. L. Fortes, G. V. Pereira, A. Coelho, R. Prikladnicki and K. Kohl, “The Productivity Paradox of AI-Powered Development” in IEEE Software, vol. 43, no. 04, pp. 28-37, July-Aug. 2026. That seems safe and intellectually honest: It appears AI-powered development is more productive in some ways. It is not in others.