JetBrains survey finds developers more willing to delegate coding to AI

JetBrains reports in a company blog post that 50% of surveyed developers were willing to delegate application logic coding to AI between May and July 2026, up from 18% about a year earlier. Willingness to delegate test writing rose from 50% to 75%, while the figure for refactoring increased from 38% to 60%.

Developers remained more cautious about code review and debugging. Forty three percent were willing to delegate code review fully, up from 33%, while 54% were not ready to delegate debugging, down from 76% a year earlier.

The survey found that 79% expect employers to require proficiency with AI development tools, compared with 59% in 2024. Thirty seven percent expect AI coding adoption to reduce demand for professional developers, up from 28%, while nearly a quarter believe AI will eventually replace human developers entirely, compared with 8% in 2024.

The results cover respondents involved in programming across software engineering, AI, infrastructure, architecture, data and quality assurance roles. JetBrains localized the survey into eight languages and weighted the results by region, employment status, programming language and familiarity with its products.