If AI writes your code, why use Python? • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by Taewoong1378 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

iLemming wrote: post #62

tptacek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are two working LLM axes. Critic strength: how much the language catches before runtime. Sensor strength: how good the empirical feedback loop is. LLMs benefit from both, but the sensor axis often is undervalued. Type safety is great, but you can't just quietly disregard the benefits some dynamically typed languages provide; that would be completely ignoring that different tasks weight the two axes differently.…

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

#372

Post by ryanolsonx » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

Two things to consider: - When reading generated code, which programming language would be the most readable to you? - Which programming language guides AI to write correct code using language features or guardrails?

There you will find your answer.

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

#373

Post by froh » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

nso wrote: post #296

linkregister wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure if satire

both.

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

#374

Post by lelanthran » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #238

throwawayk7h wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I know I am better at Python personally and am going to keep using it until the speed penalty matters to my project,

I hate Python (app distribution is painful), but will still reach for it before I reach for Go. Rust doesn't even enter the equation.

I would not have even needed to reach for Go in about half my programs if Python had mandatory typing and single-file no-dep distribution.

> and then maybe I’ll let an AI rewrite the whole thing in a faster language.

Even then, my reasons for discarding Python when I do discard it is almost never "performance", it's because the problem space requires mandatory typing for complex data types, or concurrency, or easy distribution.

Of course, this requires me to figure out quite early ion a project that those things would be needed.

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

#375

Post by dragonelite » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:47 AM UTC

Kind of my fear is that the industry and dev community will ignore new frameworks, languages, architectures etc because the LLM aren't trained on those new things.

For example low level converging to Rust, web frontends to something like React etc.

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

#376

Post by amarant » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

bnjms wrote: post #363

amarant wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I hadn't heard of lojban before. Cool project! Anecdotally, I think language effects the way you think more than most people realise, which is why I think a logical language is a great idea: it might "trick" people into thinking more logically! Now to get someone to actually speak it with!

If you’ve not heard of Lojban you may not have heard of Sapir-Whorf. Or you’re indirectly referring to it. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/relativi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I had not! Cool to see that there's a established theory about linguistic determinism(great term btw!)

I was only speaking from personal experience, I moved from Sweden to Brazil in my early twenties and after a while I began thinking and dreaming in Portuguese. I noticed then that my thought process changed(actually, I noticed it upon moving back to Sweden, as my thoughts and dreams shifted back to my mother's tongue. The shift the way back was much faster since I already spoke Swedish whereas in Brazil I had to learn the language before beginning thinking in it)

Anyway, I noticed then that I would interpret the world differently depending on which language I used for my internal monologue. Like way different. It was a curious experience!

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

#377

Post by ulfw » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

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]…

How is this comparable in any way?

The recipient of the blog posts (all of us) can read English. None can read whatever this Logjam is.

If AI writes code why not write it straight into assembler or binary? No need to compile an intermediate language if the end user (the machine) is running on binary not on Python, nor on Rust, nor on BASIC or Swift or any intermediary human-optimised language

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

#378

Post by hona_mind » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

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

#379

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

bnjms wrote: post #363

amarant wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I hadn't heard of lojban before. Cool project! Anecdotally, I think language effects the way you think more than most people realise, which is why I think a logical language is a great idea: it might "trick" people into thinking more logically! Now to get someone to actually speak it with!

If you’ve not heard of Lojban you may not have heard of Sapir-Whorf. Or you’re indirectly referring to it. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/relativi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by theshrike79 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

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.

Let's say you get access to a microservice from another team in the company. Do you read through and audit every line of code?

What if it's from an external vendor? A 3rd party SaaS?

At which point do you stop caring about reading every line of code you run?