Paper

{
  "raw_xml": "<entry>\n    <id>http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23905v1</id>\n    <title>Novice Developers Produce Larger Review Overhead for Project Maintainers while Vibe Coding</title>\n    <updated>2026-02-27T10:55:43Z</updated>\n    <link href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23905v1' rel='alternate' type='text/html'/>\n    <link href='https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.23905v1' rel='related' title='pdf' type='application/pdf'/>\n    <summary>AI coding agents allow software developers to generate code quickly, which raises a practical question for project managers and open source maintainers: can vibe coders with less development experience substitute for expert developers? To explore whether developer experience still matters in AI-assisted development, we study $22,953$ Pull Requests (PRs) from $1,719$ vibe coders in the GitHub repositories of the AIDev dataset. We split vibe coders into lower experience vibe coders ($\\mathit{Exp}_{Low}$) and higher experience vibe coders ($\\mathit{Exp}_{High}$) and compare contribution magnitude and PR acceptance rates across PR categories. We find that $\\mathit{Exp}_{Low}$ submits PRs with larger volume ($2.15\\times$ more commits and $1.47\\times$ more files changed) than $\\mathit{Exp}_{High}$. Moreover, $\\mathit{Exp}_{Low}$ PRs, when compared to $\\mathit{Exp}_{High}$, receive $4.52\\times$ more review comments, and have $31\\%$ lower acceptance rates, and remain open $5.16\\times$ longer before resolution. Our results indicate that low-experienced vibe coders focus on generating more code while shifting verification burden onto reviewers. For practice, project managers may not be able to safely replace experienced developers with low-experience vibe coders without increasing review capacity. Development teams should therefore combine targeted training for novices with adaptive PR review cycles.</summary>\n    <category scheme='http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom' term='cs.SE'/>\n    <published>2026-02-27T10:55:43Z</published>\n    <arxiv:comment>Accepted to MSR 2026 Mining Challenge</arxiv:comment>\n    <arxiv:primary_category term='cs.SE'/>\n    <author>\n      <name>Syed Ammar Asdaque</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Imran Haider</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Muhammad Umar Malik</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Maryam Abdul Ghafoor</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Abdul Ali Bangash</name>\n    </author>\n  </entry>"
}