According to Google, 30% of the code developers write is now generated by AI. Sounds amazing… until you stop and ask: what does that actually mean for me?

Does that mean we work 30% less? Deliver 30% faster? Are 30% happier? Spoiler: nope!

What they don’t tell you about that “30%”

That number is sneaky. Yes, AI can generate lines of code. And yes, sometimes it nails it.
But if you’re a real developer 👨‍💻👩‍💻 —not one of those posting epic LinkedIn threads about “the day I discovered you can map an array” or giving talks with just two years of experience 🎤— you know that writing code is rarely the thing that takes the most time. In fact, it’s often the quickest part.

What really takes time is:

• 🧠 Figuring out what the client actually wants.
• 💣 Planning how to build it without blowing up the rest of the project.
• 🔁 Testing it 25 times because it works locally but not in staging.
• 🧩 Wrestling with dependencies that hate each other more than your microservices do.
• ⚔️ Solving merge conflicts that feel more like gang wars.
• 🚧 Fighting with a new Composer version that “breaks everything but for your own good.”
• 📚 Reading API docs that look like they were written by an insomniac gremlin.
• 🤬 Re-reading them because it turns out they’re not badly written —they’re just plain wrong.

And I could keep going… long enough to fill a couple of books 📖📖.

And in all that, AI helps… but not as much as you’d hope.

The other thing they don’t tell you

Sometimes, that magical 30% the AI wrote includes a bug (or three), or something that just… doesn’t quite make sense. Because sure, it writes fast. But that doesn’t mean it writes what you actually need. 😅

And here comes the classic truth:

“Reading someone else’s code is always harder than writing your own.”

Now imagine that “someone else” is an overconfident robot with no real grasp of context 🤖.

Boom —you’ve just been promoted to full-time PR reviewer. Fun times. 🥲 You’ll start to appreciate that one team lead who actually reviews your commits… 🫡

Because yes, sometimes the AI throws a full function at you that looks elegant… until you test it, it fails, and you have to go line by line trying to understand what on earth it was doing. That is, if it hasn’t already slipped in a subtle bug that crashes production and makes you rethink your life choices. 🧨💥

So yes, the headline is technically true. AI might have written 30% of the code, and maybe you just changed two lines to fix the bug. But oh boy… those two lines? Blood, sweat and tears. 😓💧

So how much time does AI really save? ⏱️

Truth is, studies vary wildly. And depending on who you ask, you’ll get a completely different answer.
In my opinion, it depends on your experience and the kind of task you’re doing:

• ✅ If you’ve got 1 to 5 years of experience, and your work mostly involves coding well-defined tasks —AI will be a blessing.
• ❌ If you’ve got 15–20 years in, working on massive codebases with cross-module functionality and high-level architecture —AI might just get in your way.
• ✅ If it’s a repetitive function you already know how to write but can’t be bothered —AI to the rescue.
• ❌ If it’s something complex, with weird business logic and tons of dependencies —the AI might give you a draft… that you end up rewriting yourself.

In short, AI is like a smart intern: if you know what you want and how to explain it, it’ll help.
If not, it might create a mess even git reset –hard can’t fix.

You’re making this up, right? 🕵️‍♂️

Actually, this all started with a gut feeling.

Everyone online is worshipping AI 🤖✨, but in my day-to-day —despite using Claude, ChatGPT, plugins, and IDEs with AI built-in— I wasn’t finishing work two hours earlier.

So I started digging a bit. 🧐

And here are the two most extreme studies I found —to show you I’m not anti-AI. Not at all.

✅ First, the optimistic one:

📘 The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot

It says developers using Copilot completed a task 55% faster than those who didn’t.

But the task? Parsing an HTTP request. Headers, body, the works.

Basically, parsing a string with a known format… the kind of thing any decent AI can spit out in 10 seconds flat.

No surprise there —especially coming from people who sell AI tools. 🤑

😬 Then I found this:

📘 Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

From METR, a non-profit (a little more impartial, maybe).

It’s a 50 page deep-dive showing that experienced developers who used AI, despite feeling faster, actually took up to 20% longer to complete certain tasks. Yep. Slower.

If nothing else, at least read the summary (AI-generated if you must —it’s worth it).

So, is AI worth using for dev work?

Absolutely. You should use it. Otherwise, you’re starting with a disadvantage. But don’t expect miracles. And don’t obsess over it. It’s not magic. And no —unless you’re a beginner with little drive to learn— it’s not going to replace you anytime soon.

It’s just another tool. Like your favorite editor, your beautifully configured terminal, or that git commit -am alias that saves your day. 🛠️💻

So… how do I use it?

Well, it’s been a while since I last checked Stack Overflow.

I use AI as a replacement: it answers faster, gives examples that match my case, and saves me from digging through 9-year-old answers with 12 edits and a comment saying “this no longer works in PHP 5.6.” 😵‍💫

It’s great for writing short functions, structured classes, or boilerplate logic I’ve already designed in my head. That stuff? Total time-saver. 🚀

And I learn a lot from it, too.

You know that moment when you know something would help you, but it’s a drag to start from scratch,
you’ve never used it, and you just can’t find that one tutorial that gets to the point? 😩 That’s when AI kills it.

When it proposes something weird, I can usually tell (balding from years of coding has its perks),
but when it’s right —it saves me from reading or watching 10 tutorials just to get the basics. 🧠⚡

But when I need context, sensitivity, or smart architectural decisions… that’s where things get sketchy. It’s not made for that. Yet.

🧠 Bottom line:

Next time someone tells you “AI already does 30% of the job.”

Ask them: “30% of the useful work or 30% of the stuff that was already fast anyway?”

🧩 Spoiler: Probably the second one.