Recent research has shown that developers spend only 16% of their time writing code, while the rest is consumed by operational and support tasks such as navigating between tools and platforms. This constant navigation, known as "contextual switching," is a major obstacle to productivity, with a University of California study finding that it can take 23 minutes to regain focus after a single interruption.
Under increasing pressure to increase productivity and rely on artificial intelligence, companies like Anthropic have begun offering new solutions such as the MCP protocol, which aims to integrate context within development environments (IDEs) and minimize the need to switch between applications. The basic idea is to keep developers where they achieve the highest production value: Inside the code editor.
The new trend is supported by the proliferation of tools like Cursor, Copilot, and Windsurf, which have become central to the "developer renaissance." Statistics show that Cursor has achieved unprecedented growth, recording $100 million in annual revenue in just one year, and 70% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Microsoft Copilot.