This developer stack isn’t on the horizon—it’s here. No-code prototyping, AI-powered development, and cloud-based infrastructure move teams from idea to production in minutes.
Software development can't be bogged down by outdated tools and inefficient workflows. Developers and technology leaders alike expect speed, flexibility, and seamless collaboration.
Three major trends are driving this transformation:
These shifts reshape how software moves from an idea to a finished product. They demand a development stack that prioritizes speed, security, and flexibility. Businesses adopting this emerging developer stack will build faster, reduce friction, and outpace the competition.
To better understand how you can take advantage, Coder released its State of Development Environments 2025 report. We use the data in the report to dive into why these trends matter, detail what the new developer stack looks like, and summarize how it will benefit you.
Traditional development workflows weren’t built for a distributed workforce. Outdated VPNs, disjointed tools, and sluggish communication slowed development. As burnout and turnover increased, companies had to rethink how they support their developers.
Developers need instant access to their environments without battling VPNs or waiting on slow provisioning. Yet, long setup times remain a challenge—only 7% of organizations can create environments in under an hour, while 21% take more than two days. Despite this, only 14% of organizations prioritize reducing these setup times, creating a critical inefficiency in development.
Teams need visibility into workflow bottlenecks without intrusive monitoring. And businesses must ensure security and compliance without adding more complexity. The old way of working simply doesn't scale.
Enterprises no longer rely on a single cloud provider. They mix and match services to control costs, improve reliability, and take advantage of best-in-class tools. But this flexibility comes at a cost—development across multiple clouds introduces complexity. While multi-cloud offers flexibility, it also introduces inefficiencies that slow development.
Each platform has different configurations, security policies, and integrations, making it harder for developers to work efficiently. Developers spend too much time adapting to different environments. Security teams struggle to maintain visibility across platforms. And companies risk losing the speed and agility that multi-cloud was meant to provide in the first place.
AI isn’t just an enhancement—it’s transforming how software is built. Developers now rely on AI-powered tools to write, debug, and optimize code faster than ever. Even non-developers can contribute through natural language interfaces, lowering the barrier to entry and increasing collaboration. These no-code app builders allow anyone to prototype ideas quickly, making it easier to test concepts before committing to full-scale development.
But this shift brings new challenges. Teams must adapt to AI-assisted workflows, ensuring code quality and security without slowing down innovation. The traditional development process wasn’t built for this level of automation. To fully unlock AI’s potential, a new developer stack is required—one that integrates AI seamlessly while maintaining control and reliability.
A new pattern is emerging—one that removes friction from development, simplifies cloud complexity, and enhances security without slowing teams down. The new developer stack consists of two core components that embrace AI natively: developer tools that streamline ideation and development, and cloud tools that provide secure, scalable infrastructure.
Developers need a faster way to move from idea to production. The AI-native developer stack introduces three critical coding tools:
This combination allows for rapid iteration and ensures that developers only invest in writing production code after testing their ideas.
We found 73% of developers need approval to deploy a new tool. Another 14% cannot choose at all. In the AI-native developer stack, surrounding infrastructure tools make coding faster, more secure, and more efficient by enabling tool choice.
Integrating these tools focuses developers on writing code instead of managing configurations, environments, and access. Visibility across the entire development workflow helps identify bottlenecks, improve efficiency, and ensure a seamless developer experience.
We found that 35% of respondents cited virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) as still being the organization standard for developers. But ask any developer and they will shake their fist in the air, cursing their VDI. Adopting this modern developer stack isn’t just about efficiency—it gives developers the tools they need to build better software, faster.
Companies that make the shift gain key advantages:
With 78% of organizations planning to standardize their development environments in the next year, the shift is already underway. However, confusion persists—while 79% of respondents report using fully managed cloud-hosted environments (CDEs), half have a limited understanding of their technical features. It's time to close the gap. It's time to rearchitect the stack.
This developer stack isn’t on the horizon—it’s here. No-code prototyping, AI-powered development, and cloud-based infrastructure move teams from idea to production in minutes. They build AI into the developer workflow, as well as use it internally to automate operations.
At Coder, we’ve integrated with Cursor, Island, Backstage, and DX to help teams deploy this architecture today. Get started today—visit github.com/coder or contact us to implement the AI-native stack in your organization.