AI assistants are being created to help software engineers conduct a variety of coding-related tasks, such as writing, documenting, and testing code. We describe the use of the watsonx Code Assistant (WCA), an LLM-powered coding assistant deployed internally within IBM. Through surveys of two user cohorts (N=669) and unmoderated usability testing (N=15), we examined developers' experiences with WCA and its impact on their productivity. We learned about their motivations for using (or not using) WCA, we examined their expectations of its speed and quality, and we identified new considerations regarding ownership of and responsibility for generated code. Our case study characterizes the impact of an LLM-powered assistant on developers' perceptions of productivity and it shows that although such tools do often provide net productivity increases, these benefits may not always be experienced by all users.

翻译：AI助手正被开发用于协助软件工程师完成各类编码相关任务，例如代码编写、文档撰写与测试。本文描述了IBM内部部署的大语言模型驱动编码助手watsonx Code Assistant（WCA）的使用情况。通过对两个用户群体（N=669）的问卷调查及非受控可用性测试（N=15），我们考察了开发者使用WCA的体验及其对生产力的影响。我们探究了开发者使用（或不使用）WCA的动机，分析了他们对工具速度与质量的预期，并针对生成代码的所有权与责任归属问题提出了新的思考维度。本案例研究揭示了大语言模型驱动助手如何影响开发者对生产力的认知，结果表明：尽管此类工具通常能带来净生产力提升，但并非所有用户都能同等体验到这些益处。