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All these studies that show "AI makes developers x% more/less productive" are predicated on the idea that developer "productivity" can be usefully captured in a single objectively measurable number.

Just one problem with that...

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Thanks for the feedback! I strongly agree this is not the only measure of developer productivity -- but it's certainly one of them. I think this measure as speaks very directly to how _many_ developers (myself included) understand the impact of AI tools on their own work currently (e.g. just speeding up implementation speed).

(The SPACE [1] framework is a pretty overview of considerations here; I agree with a lot of it, although I'll note that METR [2] has different motivations for studying developer productivity than Microsoft does.)

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3454122.3454124

[2] https://metr.org/about

As long as the true productivity is correlated with that number it should be fine.

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