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What's the best programming language for coding agents?

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Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#161

Post by cryptos »

agentcoops wrote: post #138
michaelteter wrote: post #64

I'm not sure I trust a source that says "just 70 tokens average, nearly half of Clojure (109 tokens)". There's no reason to add the phrase "nearly half of", and there's especially no reason to add it when it's significantly far away from half. But on the main topic, I still feel that Go is an excellent choice for LLMs. There is pretty much just one way of doing most things, and the available training data is pretty c…

Professionally, Scala was always my favorite language to work in and I was lucky to get to use it most of my career. It is, however, probably the worst language I’ve experienced using with LLMs. Next worst is any dynamic language: it’s just so hard to not introduce strange bugs after iterating on a large-ish project across multiple agent sessions. I’ve had good enough experiences with Rust, but actually OCaml has bee…

I've experience severe problems with Scala in teams with different skill levels or programming styles. Sometimes Scala code was very cryptic. As much as I like the elegance of the language as such, I've given up on it completely because it is not a good fit for industrial software development in my opinion.

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#162

Post by bezko »

michaelteter wrote: post #64

I'm not sure I trust a source that says "just 70 tokens average, nearly half of Clojure (109 tokens)". There's no reason to add the phrase "nearly half of", and there's especially no reason to add it when it's significantly far away from half. But on the main topic, I still feel that Go is an excellent choice for LLMs. There is pretty much just one way of doing most things, and the available training data is pretty c…

I would argue that the fact that there is a lot of bad python code out there is actually a good thing for training data, gives the chance of learning what works and what doesn't.Also there are bad programmers that have found original solutions to very niche problems, would be nice to know about those even if it means rewriting the whole thing.

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#163

Post by transdev12 »

michaelteter wrote: post #64

I'm not sure I trust a source that says "just 70 tokens average, nearly half of Clojure (109 tokens)". There's no reason to add the phrase "nearly half of", and there's especially no reason to add it when it's significantly far away from half. But on the main topic, I still feel that Go is an excellent choice for LLMs. There is pretty much just one way of doing most things, and the available training data is pretty c…

I’ve been landing on go for a similar reason, which was the realization that LLMs are in many ways just massive cargo culting machines. People will call it “quality training data”, but really LLMs will just reflect the norms and behaviors of whatever ecosystem they’re using.

I like to think go’s lack of magic and standard library will lead to lower maintenance burden over time, but that’s mostly just vibes so far.

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#164

Post by packetlost »

transdev12 wrote: post #163
michaelteter wrote: post #64

I'm not sure I trust a source that says "just 70 tokens average, nearly half of Clojure (109 tokens)". There's no reason to add the phrase "nearly half of", and there's especially no reason to add it when it's significantly far away from half. But on the main topic, I still feel that Go is an excellent choice for LLMs. There is pretty much just one way of doing most things, and the available training data is pretty c…

I’ve been landing on go for a similar reason, which was the realization that LLMs are in many ways just massive cargo culting machines. People will call it “quality training data”, but really LLMs will just reflect the norms and behaviors of whatever ecosystem they’re using. I like to think go’s lack of magic and standard library will lead to lower maintenance burden over time, but that’s mostly just vibes so far.

As someone who has mostly written Rust and Python over the last 10 years... yeah. Go is actually a really solid choice for Agents IME

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#165

Post by cynicalpeace »

rytill wrote: post #63
cynicalpeace wrote: post #21

I've long suspected that LLMs will just output pure bits eventually

Why would this be the case when the text that produces binaries (code) is usually both more token efficient and vastly more effectively organized for modification/extension? Unless by bits you just mean text in general, or any data since it’s all bits, in which case what you’re saying is trivially already true. It seems like you’re saying that long term LLMs will output pure machine code as the most effective way to…

token efficiency could become irrelevant in the long term

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#166

Post by Supermancho »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #151

"Languages with a lot of bad code out there (e.g., PHP) will perform worse " This is what tells me that AI's are not 'self improving'. If they could read a manual and understand it, then they should come up with better solutions. Not just regurgitate bad slop they learned from bad examples.

Who is claiming AI are self-improving, other than random low signal posts on the internet?

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#167

Post by cynicalpeace »

zerr wrote: post #111
cynicalpeace wrote: post #21

I've long suspected that LLMs will just output pure bits eventually

Or just replace all of the apps? Why would a user use apps if everything (eventually) can be achieved with an AI?

i think the main blocker to this are the owners of the App Stores themselves. Apple won't let this happen if it can help it.

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#168

Post by cynicalpeace »

nicebyte wrote: post #22
cynicalpeace wrote: post #21

I've long suspected that LLMs will just output pure bits eventually

are you implying that text is impure bits?

when the model predicts the next token, it doesn't predict the next bit.

I'm saying, eventually, it will... perhaps :)

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#169

Post by nojvek »

imagent wrote: post #149

Architect your system to use the best tool for each problem. Doing a minimal data pipeline? Use Python. Building a backend? Use Go. Building a frontend? Use React / Typescript. Building a stack that does all of these? Still use Python, Go, React/Typescript. Because by architecting it this way you make the AI less likely to accidentally refactor logic between layers. In other words, architecting with multiple language…

I’ve found that nodejs/cloudflare workers are pretty awesome. Typescript everything is a pretty phenomenal stack.

Re: What's the best programming language for coding agents?

#170

Post by pianopatrick »

tadamcz wrote: post #115
pianopatrick wrote: post #46

I'd like to see the results for Ada on these same measures. On the theory that the Ada type system covers more classes of errors than other languages, and so AI can self correct better.

You're in luck! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49254706

Thanks
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