AI is making us write more code. That's the problem.
I analyzed research papers on AI-generated code quality. The findings:
→ 1.7x more issues than human-written code
→ 30-41% increase in technical debt
→ 39% increase in cognitive complexity
→ Initial speed gains disappear within a few months
We're building the wrong thing faster and calling it productivity.
That's my experience too.
Dave Farley's. MSE channe, which I usually respect,l recently claimed the opposite though, based on a study they took part in.
As I've said to a few other people, the best teams with exceptional discipline may get better results.
In which case, I want data and I want measured by the CodeRabbit people so we have a basis for comparison.
Yeah I get the impression that the Dave Farley shop is quite professional and disciplined. Although they use Java and write mainly business / finance apps. Which are perhaps structurally relatively simple? They had a sample of 150 devs.
This is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9EbCb5A408
Focus is on claude code and the maintainability by humans of code written by AI.
And this is the study:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00788
@mlevison not sure what you are saying..
That they have a good reputation for serious research?
Right. Their methodology seemed sane to me.
The results surprising. But as you say perhaps helped by some very disciplined Devs.
@oschonrock I highly recommend the book: "Your Code as a Crime Scene" - Adam Tornhill.
https://codescene.com/hubfs/web_docs/Business-impact-of-code-quality.pdf this is the paper that I recommend to Scrum Masters and Developers.
Mark Levison
Oliver Schönrock