Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If AI writes your code, why use Python?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 1001 posts

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

#11

Post by chneu »

niek_pas wrote: post #2

Bit off topic but why in the world are people still posting on medium? The reading experience is abhorrent; I couldn’t even finish reading this article before a full screen popup literally blocked the sentence I was reading. Is there some incentive I’m not seeing?

My best guess is momentum. Some people are very, very brand loyal and have to do things in relation to what/how others do things.

In reality it doesn't matter where something is posted, just give us a url, but some people don't operate that way.

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

#13

Post by xnx »

For the utilities I write it is faster to iterate without having to compile. When I get to the point where I'm done adding changing features, and performance is an annoyance I can always ask the AI to "rewrite this in Go". (I've never gotten to that point.)

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

#14

Post by rchowe »

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 definitely the correct tool for the job.

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

#16

Post by GardenLetter27 »

The LLMs just churns out non-idiomatic slop in any language.

It doesn't matter if the 800-line if statement is able to use pattern matching.

There's been a lot of progress on making coding agents able to solve problems when they can easily evaluate in a closed loop, we desperately need something similar for controlling complexity and using relevant abstractions.

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

#17

Post by an0malous »

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 domains so there's enough training data for the LLM to be proficient in that language

5. A large open source ecosystem of libraries to write less code and avoid the tendency for generated code to bloat

It's basically all the same things you look for in general. I think TypeScript scores high here but I'm curious if anyone knows of a language that fits these criteria better.

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

#18

Post by ane »

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?

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

#19

Post by tptacek »

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…

Type safety feels like the big one; anything you can shift to static/compile-time regimes benefits agents immensely.

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

#20

Post by __mharrison__ »

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 other languages as there are times when Python isn't appropriate)

Post reply on HN