How are CS students using resources and AI tools for coding tasks?

Studies on the use o f AI tools in CS course s focus on prescriptive uses of AI tools that preemptively assign a use case to the tool. To our knowledge, this is the first user study that surveys CS students on how they use AI tools for their coding tasks by personal choice. We surveyed 26 CS students and practitioners with various programming experiences using AI tools for coding tasks (i.e., writ e, debug, etc.). When asked about the most common resources they have used to write a 300 - line program from scratch, blog entries ( e.g., Stack Exchange, etc.) were their top choice, followed by AI coding assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot, etc.). When asked about resources to debug code, AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, etc.) were the most common choice, followed by blog entries. AI coding assistants are used more for writing code, while AI chatbots are used for debugging tasks. Respondents with all programming experience prefer online resources for coding tasks - whether AI - powered or not - rather than direct human help from peers an d instructors.