Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey: Trust, AI, and the Future of Coding

Hi everyone. Welcome back here to techstrong tv. Uh, our next guest, well, we've interviewed folks from Stack Overflow before lots of times, but this is, I think the first time we have Jody Bailey on.

Jody is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Stack Overflow. Jody, welcome to Techstrong tv. Thank you.

Thank you. Excited to be here. Appreciate you.

Welcome. So I appreciate you coming on. So give us an idea of, uh, you know, how long you've been with Stack Overflow, how'd you get here?

Yeah. I've been with Stack Overflow for a little over three years now, and I got here via a WSI was at AWS prior to this where I ran an engineering organization product and engineering organiz was based, focused on providing online training for AWS users and experts. Prior to that, I was at a company called Pluralsight.

So I got kind of a background Sure. In technical education, online education. And candidly, I actually was thinking I might take some time off, you know, maybe retire or at least take some time off.

Yeah. We all have these visions, Right. And I then the reality is, you're bored outta your mind.

Right? I got a call and it's like, oh, you know, how about Stack Overflow? It's like, ah, it's interesting, but nah, nah, but you sure?

Well just talk to the CEO and I think you've met Prashant, right? And, uh, yes, I have. I've had him mine.

Yeah. I had a conversation with him and I mean, it's Stack Overflow, right? Everybody knows Stack Overflow, you know, it's what, you know, tens of millions, 80 million questions and answers and you know, it's where you get all your answers and copy your code and all those things.

So it's like, okay. And then I just started talking to people and I really liked the vision. I liked, you know, the mission of serving technologists and being a source of expertise and knowledge and, and, you know, three and a half years later, here I am.

So it's been, it's been really fun and I'm really glad to be here. Absolutely. You know, um, you're right.

I think everyone knows Stack Overflow, at least in our audience, Right? Right. Yeah.

I go to a party, right? And they, I ask somebody ask, well, what do you do? Where do you work?

I say, stack Overflow, and I immediately know whether they're technical or not. Right. Right.

Because if if they, if they are, they know it. If they, they don't, ah, cool. They probably are it.

Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah.

Now, of course, you know, with everything going on in the world with AI and all of this other stuff, like all of us and like everything else, stack Overflow has kinda changed missions a little bit, not so much changed missions. 'cause I bet you the mission's still the same, which is to help developers and technical people solve issues, problems, right? Yeah.

And, um, but AI has had a huge effect in that for sure. And, um, so, so it'll be interesting. Now, one of the things I'm always interested in with Stack Overflow is you guys have been doing your a survey for, what is it now, 15 years or something like that, right?

Yeah, Exactly. Quite some time. And, um, it, it's, I'm interested to see what this year brings in terms of AI and how, how code develop.

You know, I, I was at, I was at a con couple of conferences recently, and I, I, I'm trying to pull out some quotes, but Google and Microsoft say 30% of their code is now being generated by ai. Another survey I saw said something like, two thirds of all code has AI fingerprints on it. So in a world where AI is generating all of this code and and, and so forth, it must have a profound impact on the Stack Overflow audience.

So with that, as a lead in, Jody, talk to us. You guys are announcing the, the survey results. Um, give us, give us the background and then let's dive into some of the nitty gritty, juicy stuff.

Yeah, well, like, like you said, you know, most people are planning on using AI tools. I think 84% of the respondents said that they wanted or planned on using AI tools, but at the same time, you know, almost half of them don't trust the, the results. So there's kind of this dichotomy there and the, the challenge that most people have that are using ai, it's, when I talk to people and when they're, you know, in the survey, it's like the, the question especially for senior developers is, okay, is it going to be faster for me to generate this code and then have to debug it or just to write it, right?

So we see a lot of developers, you know, the biggest challenge really is, you know, it can generate so much code so quickly, but then do you trust it? Is it accurate? And then how do you, how do you debug it?

And honestly, I, I think that going forward as stacked overflow kind of evolves from, you know, kind of the traditional question and answer around the programming language as we've been familiar with, I think it's really going to be about helping create that community for people to connect with other experts to help figure some of those things out. You know, when I, when I talk to senior developers as they're, you know, trying to verify what's there, it's, well, I have experience, right? But you see more and more people coming up who are starting their career generating code and may or may not have the experience to debug.

And, you know, what, what we hope to do, what I imagine doing as we go forward is creating more of that connection of experts and peers that you can get feedback and you can get support. And that's kind of what Stack Overflow has always been about. Right?

You have a question and you have a, like, group of experts around the world, you know, having, you know, a hundred million experts is a lot more useful than having, you know, the, the three people down the hall, so to speak. So, yeah, so I think, anyway, yeah, so I think, I think there's a real opportunity there, uh, to help people and be that vital source, not just of the technology, but also to help connection with other experts. I, I think in many ways, that was the hidden source, right?

Yeah. Of stack overflows, which was connecting with oth with experts. But these experts oftentimes are your peers.

Exactly. And that, that's a, that's a great thing. So this year's survey received over almost 50,000 responses.

Yeah. You know, from the worldwide audience, I don't know if you have this number across, well, you know, off top of your, your fingertips, but over the course of the 15 years, how many responses have you guys garnered? Oh, wow.

That's Gotta be million. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you think anywhere between 50 and 90,000 responses every year, something like that. So it, it, it gets up there pretty quick. That's quite a body of knowledge as they say.

Right, Exactly. One might be able to create an LLM out of it even. Yeah.

You might imagine, right? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, um, It's interesting 'cause I think, you know, that information as well as just all the information we have that trusted knowledge Sure. Is really an important aspect. And I, I think it's fairly well known.

We've partnered with some of the LLM providers to help them create more accurate content. And, you know, it's one of the beauties of the way our founders established that overflow was to really have pretty rigorous moderation to ensure that the questions and answers were not just opinion based, but they were back based. You know, that they, you provide the code, the issues, you were able to make sure it actually works, and that they, you know, they stand the test of time.

And, and while it can make it more challenging to ask a good question, uh, it ensures that you get good answers. And that quality question and answer has been, you know, really valuable to creating better ai. Sure, sure.

Um, you know, Jody, I always, when we talking to people regarding surveys and stuff, I always like to ask the person I'm interviewing, what were the three big takeaways from the survey this year? So for me, one, you know, it's not surprising that more people plan on using it. Right.

It was a little surprising that people trust it less than they did before. So, so I think that combination of, well, I'm gonna use it more, but I trust it less. I thought that was pretty interesting.

It's, yeah, that is a little kinda counterintuitive. Right? Right.

Another one, and, and you know, maybe shame on me for not really, really paying that much attention to it, but, you know, the developer happiness went up, right? It was, but it's like 24%. And, and I, I'm pretty happy at work and I'd like to think that the people that work for me are, but to think that only about a quarter of developers really enjoy, are really happy at work, but surprising to me, and that that was, oh, that was a good signal.

Um, you know, so that, that was, that was a little surprising. Um, and then, I don't know, the, the third thing, boy, we have to, some of it doesn't feel that surprising just because I'm talking to people all the time, but just again, just, you know, 45%, you know, saying that, uh, that debugging an AI de debugging AI generated code can take longer than actually writing it themselves. You know, I think that's, that's a pretty important factor.

Agreed. I, I would say so too. If you don't mind, let's dig into the, I trust it less, but I'm going to use it more.

Yeah. What do you think is behind that? People are experimenting and the more they experiment, the more they realize that it's not all what it seems.

Right. The, the thing that has been really interesting to me is when and how people are using it. And I was talking to, to a peer of a, another organization that meet with regularly, and I've seen it even within my own team, and that is what a lot of the code that I think is being generated.

And you've mentioned that companies have given you these quotes of the volume of content or code that's generated. What, what I'm observing is that a lot of that code is often around things that maybe wouldn't have been done otherwise, right? So it's not always taking the biggest, baddest, toughest problems and solving those, but it could be things that in the past you thought, I'd like to do that, but it's just, it's gonna take too long to figure it out to get it done, et cetera.

So, uh, an example would be, you know, talking to somebody, they have a number of tests that run on a proprietary system and they'd like to move it over to an open source tool, right? And in the past they're like, it, it works. I don't wanna mess with it.

I've gotta figure it out. It's a lot of work. Well, next thing you know, they start vibe coding and it's not perfect, but it gets close enough that they're like, Hey, I can actually do this and actually start doing that, that transformation.

And so I'm seeing more and more of, of people doing more coding with the things that are less critical path, understanding those, but at the same time as they're doing that, they're recognizing that, you know, it doesn't always produce the results they want. So, so I think that's, that's something at the same time, not to to ramble on, but I mean, things are changing so fast, right? And it's getting better so quickly that, you know, I'm anxious to see the results of the, the survey next year and see how it changes.

I mean, just given how quickly things are changing, I, I feel like you could almost run it every quarter and, and get, you know, slightly different answers on, on some of the perceptions. I don't disagree with you at all, man. Hey, Jody, you know, time goes quick on here.

For people who maybe want to go download the report and kinda read a lot, you, you know, how tech people are, they like to get into the minutiae. How, how can they get their hands on the report and maybe look at some of these, uh, responses in more detail? com.

I know I should have that link off the top of my head, but uh, it's okay. com, it's probably featured there. Yeah, Yeah.

You find it easy. Or You could probably just Google Stack Overflow 2025 developer survey. That would work.

A hundred percent. Yeah. That still works, right?

Yeah, exactly. Or you could maybe even ask one of Theis about it, and they may have it too, right? They give you a summary and a link to the, the results And you don't even have to Exactly.

That's A whole nother story. We'll discuss that next time. That sounds good.

But Jody Bailey, thanks for coming on here on Textron tv. We appreciate it. Keep up the great work.

Um, actually I might have that for us here. Um, actually, we're gonna, you know what, we'll, these are not live, obviously. We'll try to get it out in the notes.

Okay. Sound good? Perfect.

Awesome. Okay. Thank you.

Alrighty. Thanks Jody. Be well.

Thanks Ellan. Take care. Alright, see ya.

We'll be back, right back here on Techstrong TV with another interview in just a moment.