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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?

#171

Post by hirvi74 »

bensyverson wrote: post #144
_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?

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.

But what is the selling point for Go? I get that it is allegedly hailed to be a simple language with basically no batteries included, but why is that a selling point? Does Go excel at anything no other language does?

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

#172

Post by mbreese »

chromacity wrote: post #110
gmueckl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training data can't be the whole answer. LLMs are really good at translating to different programming languages. This makes sense, given that they are derived from text translation systems. I'm getting great results in languages with comparatively small bodies of freely available code. The bigger hurdle is usually that LLMs tend to copy common idioms in the target language and if it is an "enterprise-y" language like…

> LLMs are really good at translating to different programming languages. ...for which ample training data is available. > This makes sense, given that they are derived from text translation systems. ...for languages with ample training data available. Yes, LLMs can combine information in novel ways. They are wonderful in many respects. But they make far more mistakes if they can't lean on copious amounts of training…

I have a language I wrote for processing data pipelines. I’ve used it for years, but I can count the number of users on one hand. I wrote it partially to learn about writing a scripting language, partially because Nextflow didn’t exist yet. I still use it now because it works much better for my way of processing data on HPC clusters.

The only code that exists on the internet for this is test data and a few docs in the github repo. It’s not wildly different from most scripting languages, from a syntax point of view, but it is definitely niche.

Both Codex and Claude figured it out real fast from an example script I was debugging. I was amazed at how well they picked up the minor differences between my script and others. This is basically on next to zero training data.

Would I ask it to produce anything super complex? Definitely not. But I’ve been impressed with how well it handles novel languages for small tasks.

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

#174

Post by gertlabs »

_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

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

#177

Post by black_knight »

faangguyindia wrote: post #119
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

This is why you should use Haskell.

Haskell is a good language for LLMs! Claude knows it really well, and the type system catches so many mistakes. Just make sure to tell it to model the domain in the type from the start.

Also, Haskell can be really performant and low level, while still keeping the benefits of typing. With the C foreign function interface you can really do anything in Haskell!

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

#178

Post by p1necone »

I find if I ask most LLMs to write a self contained script/utility, even in codebases that are 90-100% written in some other language most will default to using python for it, or sometimes bash.

Usually those kinds of utility scripts are one-shotted without any further input from me, and once they're there and doing what I need I usually don't bother converting them to whatever I would have written them in otherwise (bash would be my usual preference for really small scripts, typescript or rust for bigger utilities, I hate writing python but reading it is fine... kind of).

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

#179

Post by vjanma »

sega_sai wrote: post #96

I think it is an interesting question what kind of programming language one needs for an era of agents. It is clear that the programming language that was designed for humans is not necessarily the best for AI-driven software development. I guess the qualities one would want is some formal correctness guarantees, high performance. A question is whether this language is Rust or it is possible to design a better new la…

[flagged]

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

#180

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

_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?

I built a programming language, and LLMs can code phenomenally well in it.

I don't think the training set matters that much, since there's no way they have my language in their training set!

Programming languages have a lot in common. Python is kind of odd when it comes to languages.

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