'I can't stop': 80% of developers find AI coding more addictive than helpful

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Yes, yes, we get it. Thanks to GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, whatever the hot new AI tool is for developers, you can get more work done than ever before as a programmer. But even as developers use them ever more to generate boilerplate, explain unfamiliar code, draft tests, refactor modules, and troubleshoot errors, many are also finding that the same tools can be pains in the rump.

That's because, as Quentin Rousseau, CTO and co-founder of the AI-powered incident report company Rootly , described in a LinkedIn post, "It's 2:47 a.m... I'm not debugging an outage. There's no deadline. I'm just watching Claude Code refactor a module… and I can't stop." Why? Because, he continued, " Agentic coding is addictive . When the agent gets things right, you get a dopamine hit. When it fails, you get an adrenaline rush." Rousseau confessed that he couldn't sleep and had to seek medical help.

This isn't too surprising. Programmers have long been prone to workaholism. However, AI has brought a new pace to the work where, as Rousseau put it, "Watching an agent's work is passive enough to feel like rest, active enough to keep you hooked." The result is a new kind of burnout.

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This isn't just one programmer's experience. AI coding can turn software development into an always-on feedback loop. Rather than completing a task and stepping away, developers can continually ask an agent for another implementation, rewrite, optimization, or refactor, or combine it with the nagging worry that stopping means leaving work undone.

Coddy Tech , a programming training company, found in a survey of 305 developers that "Four in five developers (80%) say their AI use has felt more like dependence than an advantage ." Sure, they found these tools useful, but they also worry that habitual reliance on AI is weakening their own problem-solving process, expanding their workload, and fostering an unhealthy relationship with work.

So it is that "more than two-fifths of developers (43%) keep coding with AI after hours even when they meant to stop, and 32% have put off sleep to keep going." Also, 39% said AI tools have made it harder to switch off from work.

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It's not just the addictive nature of AI tools. Heavy use of AI, reported 74% of developers, made it more likely they'd earn a raise or promotion. However, 51% also said they were more likely to burn out.