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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?

#231

Post by throwawayk7h »

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #211

It's strange to me that this blog post was written in English. If AI is available, why aren't we all communicating in Lojban? [0] It's an obviously superior language. What does it matter that many people already communicate in English and much of computing depends on that language? AI doesn't care about that. Plus, if you ever need to edit Lojban without AI, you should be able to pick it up in a few weeks, right? [0]…

AI has not been trained on Lojban. And furthermore, this article is almost certainly primarily intended to be read by humans directly.

I understand you're being facetious, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about programming languages in comparison.

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

#232

Post by bfung »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #203
bensyverson wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Go. LLMs have seen a ton of it, they write it well, it compiles practically instantly, and it has all the advantages of a typed compiled language. I created a big Python codebase using AI, and the LLM constantly guesses arguments or dictionary formats wrong. Unit tests and stuff like pydantic help, but it's better to avoid that whole class of runtime errors altogether.

Why use Go when you can use Rust?

1. Amount of Rust training data isn’t as much as Go.

2. Golang syntax and style is very verbose yet simple. There’s not as many options nor programming language to domain mapping needed as in Rust. Leads to needing less sophisticated LLM to spit out Golang than Rust successfully and efficiently.

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

#233

Post by thfuran »

rossjudson wrote: post #216
gertlabs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, LLMs are actually much worse at reasoning in Python than other common programming languages for agentic coding tasks. Data here: https://gertlabs.com/rankings?mode=agentic_coding

My standard joke here: Q: Say, what does this Python code do? A: Nobody f&%^ing knows.

That’s Perl.

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

#235

Post by topham »

BariumBlue wrote: post #210
gertlabs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, LLMs are actually much worse at reasoning in Python than other common programming languages for agentic coding tasks. Data here: https://gertlabs.com/rankings?mode=agentic_coding

Hah, I was just thinking that Python likely has a vast ocean of training data, but it's likely of lower quality, being much of it is written by beginners and those who aren't primarily programmers.

There's a broken idea that AI know Python because they're written in Python.

Not how any of it works.

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

#236

Post by momoschili »

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #211

It's strange to me that this blog post was written in English. If AI is available, why aren't we all communicating in Lojban? [0] It's an obviously superior language. What does it matter that many people already communicate in English and much of computing depends on that language? AI doesn't care about that. Plus, if you ever need to edit Lojban without AI, you should be able to pick it up in a few weeks, right? [0]…

Are you trying to psyop us into using Lojban?

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

#237

Post by isityettime »

gertlabs wrote: post #174
_boffin_ wrote: post #80

Read the first few comments and surprised I didn’t see it, but training data. The voluminous amount of Python in the training data. I could write in brainfuck with ai, but I presume, wouldn’t get the same results than if going with python. My follow up question: with AI now, why care about a lang until you need to?

Surprisingly, LLMs are actually much worse at reasoning in Python than other common programming languages for agentic coding tasks. Data here: https://gertlabs.com/rankings?mode=agentic_coding

I would love to see how they do with functional languages and especially Lisps here. I've noticed pretty good performance with Emacs Lisp relative to overall model strength, but I haven't used LLMs to application code in any such languages.

It would also be interesting to see how Python compares to other languages in its niche (Ruby, Perl, Raku).

Thanks for putting this together! It's interesting.

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

#238

Post by parsimo2010 »

throwawayk7h wrote: post #231
GavinAnderegg wrote: post #211

It's strange to me that this blog post was written in English. If AI is available, why aren't we all communicating in Lojban? [0] It's an obviously superior language. What does it matter that many people already communicate in English and much of computing depends on that language? AI doesn't care about that. Plus, if you ever need to edit Lojban without AI, you should be able to pick it up in a few weeks, right? [0]…

AI has not been trained on Lojban. And furthermore, this article is almost certainly primarily intended to be read by humans directly. I understand you're being facetious, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about programming languages in comparison.

It’s funny that in your reply “this article is almost certainly intended to be read by humans” you made what is the best case to keep writing code in Python even with AI.

Sure, if you are going to have an AI do all your coding and maintenance you can use whatever language it’s best at. But if you want to participate in the writing, debugging, and maintenance, it has to be in a language that a human can read. I’m not saying that Rust or Go is unreadable, but I know I am better at Python personally and am going to keep using it until the speed penalty matters to my project, and then maybe I’ll let an AI rewrite the whole thing in a faster language.

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

#239

Post by ruszki »

btown wrote: post #89
_boffin_ wrote: post #80

Read the first few comments and surprised I didn’t see it, but training data. The voluminous amount of Python in the training data. I could write in brainfuck with ai, but I presume, wouldn’t get the same results than if going with python. My follow up question: with AI now, why care about a lang until you need to?

Also, every single interpreter error has an entire corpus of StackOverflow-esque fix suggestions alongside it, and the model has been fine-tuned to minimize such errors on the first try. This hasn't been done for more obscure languages. You'll likely take more turns, on average, to get a working output, even if your problem is fully verifiable via test input/outputs - and if it's not verifiable, you don't want the "a…

There is no "entire corpus of StackOverflow-esque fix suggestions" about anything which is newer than a few years. I'm using cutting edge Android frameworks all the time. Yet, LLMs fix problems even when Google/Kagi has zero answers, which happens more often than not. We are way over this requirement.

I especially found that there is no difference between languages based on that. All generated code's architecture is terrible, if you don't actively manually maintain them all the time. If you don't have a few 10s of thousands of finely architected code already in your codebase, from which they can understand how it should be really done. And the reason, I think, is quite simple: the average code on the internet - regardless of market penetration of the given language - is simply bad.

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

#240

Post by ruszki »

djeastm wrote: post #197
vhantz wrote: post #112

> A shipped app, in a language nobody on the team knew Great! Let's look back on this not too far in the future.

This happened before AI when a guy wrote a key tool in some random language a decade ago and the rest of us were left to maintain it. We somehow managed.

Yet, it's not uncommon, that such tools are the reasons to still use DOS, dial-up internet, or frameworks which have more security holes than lines, because they are unmaintained for decades.
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