How Researchers Use and Verify AI Coding Assistants: Tasks and Validation Practices in Scientific Programming
[Inżynieria oprogramowania] Autorzy: Gabrielle O'Brien, Reed Milewicz, Nasir Eisty
Generative AI has entered research programming, yet there is little evidence about which tasks researchers hand to it or how they decide whether its code is correct. We draw on 527 free-text responses to a 2025 survey of researchers who write code, most of them at U.S. universities. In each response, a researcher recounts a single task from their own work, the way they used an AI tool for it, and what they did to assess the result. We coded the task and the evaluation strategies reported, and related both to programming experience, research area, and confidence ratings. Use was concentrated in five tasks: data handling, visualization, debugging, mathematical/scientific computing, and statistical analysis. Evaluation was informal and individual. Over half of accounts described running the generated code, while automated tests and review by another person were rare. Use cases and evaluati…
- Kategoria arxiv
- cs.SE
- Kategoria
- Inżynieria oprogramowania