The developer skills company HackerRank recently published a new report on the state of coding skills related to artificial intelligence (AI) and discovered that the nature of a developer’s work is rapidly changing to keep up with advancements in AI. In order to adapt to this new reality, businesses must also change the way they find, hire, and upskill developers.
In February and March 2023, HackerRank surveyed more than 42,000 international developers and examined data on recent technical hiring from its skill assessment platform. According to survey respondents, 75% of developers have already changed their skill sets in preparation for this seismic shift, and 82% of developers believe AI will redefine the future of programming and software development.
“We’ve entered an AI revolution that is poised to change the very nature of what it means to be a developer and write code,” said Vivek Ravisankar, co-founder and CEO of HackerRank. “I believe that this revolution will lead to greater opportunities for developer creativity, faster innovation than ever before, and the democratisation of development. This is only the very tip of the iceberg.
AI is Applied to Boost Coding Tasks
According to the report, employers and developers are rushing to adopt artificial intelligence in the workplace. The availability of AI assistants will fundamentally alter the way that development work is done by automating many boring or repetitive tasks and freeing up time for more imaginative problem-solving and abstract thought.
Ankit Arya, Principal Product Manager, AI at HackerRank, predicted that “AI is set to become a key part of developer workflows, with the rise of AI assistants like GitHub Copilot and all-purpose tools such as ChatGPT.” I personally find ChatGPT to be much more effective than conventional search engines for finding information or code snippets while coding. The potential of AI lies in enhancing rather than displacing developer skills.
Demand for AI Skill Sets Has Increased
Employers are under increasing pressure to identify, select, and develop teams with the technical expertise required to support innovation and capitalise on business opportunities made possible by AI advancements. The report found that since ChatGPT’s public launch in November 2022, the creation of new assessments with AI-related questions has increased by 81%. HackerRank’s developer skills assessments are essential for interviewing and validating technical talent. Test creations are a reliable predictor of business interest, and the rise in usage points to a surge in demand for workers with AI-related skill sets.
The report also revealed a discrepancy between the AI skills that businesses require and the ones that they are currently testing in prospective employees. Machine learning, Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, deep learning, and AWS were found to be the most in-demand skills for AI-related roles by HackerRank after using machine learning to extract skill requirements from tens of thousands of job descriptions. However, businesses still conduct testing for more abstract and general subjects like statistics and problem-solving.
