2025 AI Coding Survey – What Developers Are Using for AI Coding (elite-ai-assisted-coding.dev)

Ainews247’s informal 2025 AI Coding survey (self-selected, directional snapshot) maps what developers actually use: models and IDEs are ubiquitous (100% adoption), chatbots near-universal (93%), and terminal agents widely used (79%). Sonnet is reported as the dominant coding model, while newer entrants like GPT-5 (and GPT-5-mini), Claude 4.1 Opus, Qwen3 Coder and Gemini 2.5 Flash show rapid uptake. VS Code remains the clear leader among IDEs, with Cursor and lighter-weight editors (Zed, Windsurf) trailing. Extensions and chatbot/agent tooling are mature (78% and 93% adoption respectively), with Claude Code and Gemini Code Assist notable leaders; Roo Code’s unexpected #2 ranking in extensions points to fast-moving preferences. The survey highlights important technical trends: developers are moving beyond simple “vibe coding” experiments into richer terminal and background agents, but background agents (40%) and vibe-coding SaaS (39%) still lag, often due to ambiguous use-cases and mixed tooling (e.g., Google AI Studio vs. general Colab usage). Implication for the AI/ML community: rapid model churn and tool fragmentation make reproducibility, prompt/context management, and integration into an AI-native software development lifecycle the next critical challenges. Production-grade AI coding success will require deliberate engineering practices—tooling governance, reliable context management, and evaluation pipelines—to convert these productivity gains into robust, maintainable systems.