Pre-AI Baseline: Developer IDE Satisfaction and Tool Autonomy in 2022

A new study by researcher Nikola Balić establishes a critical quantitative baseline of developer satisfaction and workflows from July 2022, immediately before generative AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT became mainstream. Analyzing data from 1,155 software developers, the research reveals a high-satisfaction ecosystem with an average rating of 8.14 out of 10, dominated by Visual Studio Code at 79% market share. The most significant finding shows that autonomy in tool choice was the strongest predictor of IDE satisfaction, with a regression coefficient of 0.51 that significantly outweighed demographic or role-based factors.

Cloud IDE adoption remained surprisingly low at just 4.3% regular usage, with 40.1% of developers citing network dependency as the primary barrier—a constraint that remains highly relevant for today's cloud-reliant AI coding assistants. The study also identified an "experimenter" segment comprising 29.9% of developers who frequently switched tools but showed no significant satisfaction difference, suggesting tool churn doesn't necessarily correlate with dissatisfaction. Additionally, IDE retention rates varied dramatically, with VS Code at 68.5% versus traditional IDEs ranging from 3.9% to 25%, indicating underlying dissatisfaction despite high overall satisfaction scores.

By providing this verifiable snapshot of developer sentiment on the eve of the AI revolution, the research creates an essential benchmark for longitudinal studies. This baseline will help researchers measure whether the productivity gains promised by AI coding tools actually translate to increased developer satisfaction, or if they create new forms of dependency that reduce the autonomy developers value most. The network dependency concerns identified in 2022 remain particularly relevant as modern AI agents increasingly rely on cloud infrastructure.