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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?

#331

Post by woctordho »

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.

How do you know it's intended to be read by humans? Don't you see how many web crawlers are there?

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

#332

Post by novok »

linkregister wrote: post #292
gwern wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post wasn't written in English, it was written in AIglish. (For god's sake, please tell me you see it at this point and you don't need to punch the opening into Pangram to see '100% AI' to recognize it by now?) So in a way it's proving its own point. Why painfully write out by hand in English when the LLM will do a better job by porting your English prompt to AIglish and get +235 points and #3 on HN?

Correct — and honestly? Not just correct, but perceptive. You didn't just read the post — you saw through it. That's not pattern matching — that's instinct.

10/10

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

#333

Post by simonkagedal »

ctippett wrote: post #302
542458 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this holds at all, because the idea with a lot of vibe-code workflows is “humans never need to read the code” which would mean that human dev ergonomics are irrelevant. Here, the blog post is still clearly targeted at humans, so human reader ergonomics are still relevant.

Yeesh, is "never reading the code" really the modus operandi we want from AI? Microsoft, for all their warts, at least had the compassion to call their AI product "Copilot", suggesting we have some residual agency in whatever it is that it produces.

There are lots of good use cases for vibe coding (”never reading the code”), prototypes, various explorations and one-offs. I’ve done various kinds of migrations where I didn’t bother to review the code much, just the output.

Possibly also some user-facing tools with a limited task and runtime environment.

Incidentally, these are all use cases where performance isn’t critical, typically, so you might as well write them in Python or Typescript or whatever makes most sense for the task.

Real production code? Yeah, you still need to be able to read it and understand it.

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

#334

Post by fulafel »

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

What would comparing rates across languages tell in the context of this benchmark? Are the tasks the same or robustly difficulty-normalized across the languages?

Also somehow the 2 language comparison graphs (avg percentile and success rate) rank Python in dramatically different positions, with Python outranking Rust and Java in the success rate. What does the avg percentile mean in this context?

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

#336

Post by clintonb »

hirvi74 wrote: post #171
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.

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?

I picked Go because it tends to use fewer resources than Node.js, and startup time is quite fast.

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

#337

Post by overfeed »

hirvi74 wrote: post #227
pylotlight wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance? Second only to rust and other lower level langs. Surely you don't need this spelled out for you...

If performance is the main difference, whatever that means, then basically Go should be reserved for when Rust and other lower level langs cannot be used due to some other constraint? Are we mainly talking about performant Web backends? Say I am building some app that I know will be CPU-bound, why choose Go over say... Swift?

> why choose Go over say... Swift?

Language religious wars are silly: you should choose a language based on your constraints and personal tastes. If there's no clear advantage of one language over another for a given task - then all the options are viable, pick one and get on with solving the problem.

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

#338

Post by adastra22 »

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]…

Well for one, Lojban is not better than English.

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

#339

Post by robot-wrangler »

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

> Data here: https://gertlabs.com/rankings?mode=agentic_coding

Oh wow, we got "tribal domination", "market simulator" and "adversarial customer service". I don't know what those are but it sure sounds like big torment nexus milestones

Maybe we could at least play nicer games like hackenbush and act surprised when there's some wicked use-case that's isomorphic.

EDIT: Ok fine. I like "Rubik's Cube Chess" a lot. Never heard of it, is this analyzed formally at all? Hard to search for since there's tons of collisions

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

#340

Post by luckystarr »

arjie wrote: post #285

Actually, I do use compiled languages for this reason. Even Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 will leave unassigned variables lying around in Python code of sufficient size. If you've got sufficient testing you'll exercise all paths, and I imagine a good prompt would ensure adding testing with coverage to see that it does happen. However, I do not have (yet) such a system but using Go/Rust helps a lot because the compile phase ac…

And you can spend your effort on features and architectural issues rather than smaller scope bugs. My experience is that Rust enables me to focus on features as long as I don't give the AI free reign. Architecture matters for correctness bugs, because some solutions are inherently more prone to the AI becoming confused along the way than others.

The more effort I spend on planning architecture with the AI, the less runtime bugs I need to investigate after it did the implementation.

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