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If AI writes your code, why use Python?

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Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#31

Post by sgt »

ane wrote: post #18
an0malous wrote: post #17

The ideal language for AI coding: 1. Type safety as basic guard rails that LLM output is syntactically and schematically correct 2. Concise since you have to review a lot more code 3. Easy to debug / good observability since you can't rely on your understanding of the code. Something functional where you can observe the state at any moment would be ideal. 4. A very large set of public code examples across various dom…

Java?

Was thinking the same. Modern Java is similar or at least quite a bit closer to many other less verbose languages. Not like your dad's Java anymore.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#32

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

dakiol wrote: post #29
__mharrison__ wrote: post #20

AI's are really good with Python. Quick turnaround. Easy to read. Tons of training data/examples. Many of the same reasons we wrote Python before. Another benefit to using Python, is if you subscribe to writing/vibing a throwaway version first, a Python version is 100x better than a spec. (Disclaimer: I teach Python and AI for a living and am doing a tutorial at pycon this week, Beyond vibe coding. Am also using othe…

Problem with Python and other non-strict typed languages is that if you let an LLM to write some stuff, you cannot truly be confident that nothing has broken. Even if your tests all pass. The LLM could have broken some path that only gets run in production in a very specific case. At least with strongly-typed languages you get a compiler error. In big codebases is non-negotiable

i have bad news

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#33

Post by serf »

dakiol wrote: post #29
__mharrison__ wrote: post #20

AI's are really good with Python. Quick turnaround. Easy to read. Tons of training data/examples. Many of the same reasons we wrote Python before. Another benefit to using Python, is if you subscribe to writing/vibing a throwaway version first, a Python version is 100x better than a spec. (Disclaimer: I teach Python and AI for a living and am doing a tutorial at pycon this week, Beyond vibe coding. Am also using othe…

Problem with Python and other non-strict typed languages is that if you let an LLM to write some stuff, you cannot truly be confident that nothing has broken. Even if your tests all pass. The LLM could have broken some path that only gets run in production in a very specific case. At least with strongly-typed languages you get a compiler error. In big codebases is non-negotiable

so it just boils down to strictness even when we're talking LLMs?

I agree with you about fast failure being a nice feature , but I also think that if you're TDDing a bunch of stuff and it fails in some categorical way , well then the test suite was lazy.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#34

Post by bad_username »

The article applies to a narrow case of a totally green field application that's going to be completely vibecoded. This is the only case where you reasonably can be indifferent to what the language is, and so you can abandon familiar Python and go with unfamiliar Rust. (If you _are_ familiar with Rust, the point of the article is moot.)

This "fair weather development" approach feels very risky if that application is going to be exposed to any serious usage. There WILL be a situation when things break and the AI will be powerless to fix it (quickly) without breaking something else in a vicious loop. There WILL be a situation where things work fine and tests pass with 3 concurrent users but grind to a complete halt with 1000 because there is something O(N^2) deep in the code. And you NEED a human to save your day (which requires also proper architecture for that to be possible in the first place). If you don't plan for this, and just hope for the best, then you are building nothing more than a toy. And if you plan for this, then it matters again what the language is, and whether your team is proficient in it.

Or maybe I too old fashioned or too behind the state of the AI art...

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#35

Post by munro »

Lately I just have Claude build most things in Rust, it's really amazing. I tried Go, but I found it wasn't as good--Rust really does to me feel like Python. That said, it still struggles with the same class of errors of building complex systems. I've tried using TLA+, Alloy, and other things but haven't found the trick yet. The best I've found is reimplementing all external systems in memory and e2e testing everything extensively, without reimplementing the tests become unusably slow, and Claude can rewrite huge surface areas with ease--it's somewhere between mocking and literally just reimplementing the external systems.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#36

Post by skybrian »

This seems sort of like asking whether a chatbot should answer you in English or Japanese. Obviously, it should use whichever language you understand. If you understand Python best, why not write code in Python?

But on the other hand, maybe you could learn some other programming language, particularly with AI help. If that's what you wanted to do anyway, it seems like a good time to learn.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#37

Post by ActorNightly »

a) Python (and Node) comprise the largest training set for all the models, so you are likely to get way better accuracy, especially with local models

b) Python code is easier to introspect, and set up test harnesses around. And also extend in agentic frameworks

c) LLMs are really good at translation. I can give it python code and it can translate it into C.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#38

Post by aaroninsf »

As always, "it depends."

I'm using coding tools to build a complex media-intensive application. The approach I'm taking is to build a _reference implementation_ in Python, which is in its design specifics, constrained to use patterns which transliterate into the actual deployment targets (iPadOS/MacOS/Web).

Why start with Python?

Because I can read it, reason about it, and run it, trivially, which are Good Things for the reference. I intend to have multiple targets; I'd rather relate them to a source of ground truth I am fluent in.

For what I'm doing, there is also a very rich set of prior art and existing libraries for doing various esoteric things—my spidey sense is that I'm benefiting from that. More examples, more discourse.

I'm out of the prediction business and won't say this is either a good model for every new project, or, one I will need in another N months/years.

But for the moment it sure feels like a sweet spot.

Ask me again though, after the reference goes gold and I actually take up the transliteration though... :)

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#39

Post by Terr_ »

A somewhat contrarian/pessimistic view: The hardest thing in any future of LLM generated code is going to be the verification step, and especially types of verification that require humans which are going to be the most expensive.

Therefore the "best" language is going to be whatever makes it easiest for humans to detect bugs, bad design, or that the "wrong thing" has been developed.

Re: If AI writes your code, why use Python?

#40

Post by ASalazarMX »

pdimitar wrote: post #22
an0malous wrote: post #17

The ideal language for AI coding: 1. Type safety as basic guard rails that LLM output is syntactically and schematically correct 2. Concise since you have to review a lot more code 3. Easy to debug / good observability since you can't rely on your understanding of the code. Something functional where you can observe the state at any moment would be ideal. 4. A very large set of public code examples across various dom…

Golang. People trash it for being verbose on errors but it's an extremely readable language and it's almost like bash, only much stronger typed and with a very rich stdlib (so it's not likely you'll need a library for a quick script). It's more or less a perfect replacement for Python for "one-off programs" and "quick scripts". Many bonus points for not having to fight shell quotation rules and trying to remember dif…

In a world where AI supposedly can write in any language, Go is much better choice than TypeScript. Imagine contemplating for more than a few seconds a choice between simple, fast, cross-compilable language, and a TypeScript -> JavaScript -> Interpreter -> JIT stack.

If you don't know Go, it's more efficient to learn it than to waste the hardware resources of thousands to stay within JavaScript.

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