> Is there any research out there suggesting LLMs help programmers get stuff done?

Any research will be limited by what the researchers control for?

In my personal experience, when I get a well written bug report or hands on detailed logs, my instinct that I feed it to an Agent and let it figure it all out has never disappointed me. It runs in the background while I work on things I instinctively know the Agent wouldn't do a good job of. How did I develop those instincts? By using Agents for like 3 days. These things (especially, for code completion) are ridiculously effective for the programming languages & code bases I work in, if nowhere else.

> Has anyone measured any improved productivity? ... I am a happy Copilot Pro user since 2021, still.

Whether productivity is tanking or not, I will find it incredibly hard to stop using LLMs/Agents just because a metric or three indicates I'd be better off without them. I must note though, it might be too soon to put a mark on productivity as it is a function of how well new technologies are integrated into processes and workflows, which typically happens over decades and not months/years.