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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?

#41

Post by __mharrison__ »

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

My anecdotal (sample size 1) experience is not consistent with this. I code fast. Refactor fast. My stuff doesn't break. But my methodology isn't the same as other's.

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

#42

Post by dev360 »

rchowe wrote: post #14

Python has a much more mature ecosystem than Rust, especially for AI/ML stuff. I ran into a rust crate that purported to do a certain ML algorithm but did not do it correctly. I managed to write a replacement with Claude though. I do think enforcing correctness at the type system level is a good idea for AI, which is why I often choose languages like C# and Rust over Python. However, for some things Python is definit…

Definitively something to be said for AI/ML library support. I find myself going with Rust / TS for a ton of my backend work lately though, even though I'm a huge Django fan for backend.

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

#43

Post by kylec »

queenkjuul wrote: post #27
kylec wrote: post #6

This post resonates. I recently built a little web service to scratch an itch I've been having and after discussing the options with Claude we settled on Go, and honestly it's been fantastic. Highly performant, native threading, dead simple to deploy with containers. And I don't even know how to read or write Go.

Go is fun, you should actually learn it

I did go through the Go tutorial many many years ago, but it's been so long I don't remember anything. I do remember it was an enjoyable process though, and I'd love to pick it up again.

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

#44

Post by ChicagoDave »

If you're using GenAI, you should go through the process of selecting an optimal tech stack for each solution, but also take into consideration that Claude and other services probably the most knowledge of python, javascript, and typescript with go, rust, java, and c# following closely behind. Consider what you're building and what elements of the tech stack is optimal for your problem-space.

I don't know rust at all and I've built three applications using it with Claude because it has speed and correctness built-in.

I use Typescript for 90% of the things I build. For web development I've used a number of tools, but mostly react, nextjs, or raw html/css/js. But if I were building an enterprise application I'd consider my team and whether opinionated (Angular) was optimal over flexible (React).

Each project should consider its own optimal tech stack.

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

#45

Post by pdimitar »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #40
pdimitar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely. And in this same thread I am noticing people offering Java (lol). Yeah, we all need 1.5s startup time for one-off scripts, surely.

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

#46

Post by __mharrison__ »

serf wrote: post #33
dakiol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are using TDD with any recent model and even local models (qwen3.5+), you alleviate most of the issues mentioned.

Note that:

Writing code, then tests

Is not equivalent to:

Writing tests, then code

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

#47

Post by __mharrison__ »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #32
dakiol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lay it on. I love to collect other's anecdotes and see where they align (or disagree)

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

#49

Post by xtracto »

queenkjuul wrote: post #27
kylec wrote: post #6

This post resonates. I recently built a little web service to scratch an itch I've been having and after discussing the options with Claude we settled on Go, and honestly it's been fantastic. Highly performant, native threading, dead simple to deploy with containers. And I don't even know how to read or write Go.

Go is fun, you should actually learn it

Oh man... I like go because it is compiled, performant, strong and statically typed. But "fun" is not something I would say about it. The ergonomics of error handling, lack of ternary operator and other stuff that compiled 30yo languages already had ...

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

#50

Post by fluffyspork »

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…

C. At least with Gemma 4 it does a fine job. Writes good error checking. Writes memory management. Mostly straightforward and easy to read. A lot of libraries. Runs everywhere.
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