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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?

#541

Post by regularfry »

isityettime wrote: post #237
gertlabs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would love to see how they do with functional languages and especially Lisps here. I've noticed pretty good performance with Emacs Lisp relative to overall model strength, but I haven't used LLMs to application code in any such languages. It would also be interesting to see how Python compares to other languages in its niche (Ruby, Perl, Raku). Thanks for putting this together! It's interesting.

I've noticed that with clojure(script) unless you specifically instruct them to keep nesting levels low, they can hit a point where they make a paren placement error and can't debug their way out of it. Although in my case while one model made the error then couldn't find what it had done, a second model that I switched to was then able to identify it and back it out. So I suspect this is a transient weakness in today's models, not something fundamental.

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

#542

Post by PeterStuer »

In my case: AI might write the code, but I have to architect the system, read the code, iterate and learn from it. Validate whether an approach makes sense, whether the chosen dependencies make sense, whether the testing is adequate and covers known failure paths ... good luck if this is a language and ecosystem you are not proficient in.

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

#543

Post by regularfry »

gertlabs wrote: post #385
phillc73 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last night I was going down the rabbit hole of "what's the best programming language to use for vibe coding." I came to a short list of: a) Typed Racket b) OCaml c) Julia I would love to see those three added to your benchmarks. And Mistral Medium 3.5 added to the LLM list, please.

Thanks for the recs, we will look into adding some of these, maybe OCaml for variety. I'm not familiar with Racket. Mistral Medium 3.5 is on there, but you will have to scroll down pretty far to find it (does not perform well): https://gertlabs.com/rankings?mode=oneshot_coding

What's going on with Qwen3.6 27b? Filtered to Python it comes out at the top of the list, which seems... well, unlikely.

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

#544

Post by ashishb »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #453

One obvious reason is Python's extreme readability, it has often been described as being as close to executable pseudo-code as one can get. If you're using an LLM to write code I think the rules would be 1. Use a language you know really well so you can read it easily, and add to it as needed. 2. Use a language that has a large training set so the LLM can be most efficient. 3. Use a language that is easy to read. If…

Python is amazing for scripting.

Python is terrible for writing big systems.

Projects whose V1 is written in Go/Rust/C++ don't normally go out and re-write V2 in Python.

The reverse is really common.

Even many famous Python packages are now Python wrappers.

https://ashishb.net/programming/python-in-production/

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

#545

Post by phillc73 »

andai wrote: post #506
phillc73 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last night I was going down the rabbit hole of "what's the best programming language to use for vibe coding." I came to a short list of: a) Typed Racket b) OCaml c) Julia I would love to see those three added to your benchmarks. And Mistral Medium 3.5 added to the LLM list, please.

Those are some fine languages, but how did you pick them? What was the criterion?

The initial criteria was strongly typed and functional first. Using an LLM for answers, of course, that returned me a list that looked like:

- Haskell

- OCaml

- F#

- Scala

- Gleam

- Purescript

- Grain

- Idris

Then I asked if there were any Schemes or Lisps that met the initial requirements, which added a bunch more options (Typed Racket, Typol, Elm, ReScript etc).

Then I asked about Julia specifically, as it's a language I'm already reasonably familiar with and knew that it's possible to write it with static annotations.

Next I started filtering the list based on additional criteria; didn't want to target a JS compilation target, performance, size of package ecosystem, tooling, community, learning curve (I do want to review and understand the output).

There were a bunch of follow-up questions over a few hours of prompting, reading and a couple of beers. All this resulted in the shortlist of OCaml, Typed Racket and Julia.

Julia pretty much remains in there, even though it doesn't really meet the strongly typed initial criteria, based on my familiarity, the ecosystem especially for AI/ML tasks and performance factors.

I know zero about OCaml and find the thought of learning it a bit daunting. Typed Racket seems more approachable anyway.

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

#546

Post by zahlman »

hasley wrote: post #464
mjr00 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has had type hinting for quite a while, and adding validation with mypy/pyright/ty as a step in CLAUDE.md (as well as having it as part of your CI pipeline) can emulate static type checking pretty well.

Agree. I am using type hints in Python as much as possible for my hand-coding. And it catches a lot of bugs (especially during code refactoring) that I would not have noticed so easily.

> And it catches a lot of bugs (especially during code refactoring) that I would not have noticed so easily.

Can you give me an example of a recent experience with this? I've been working without type annotations for many, many years, and I keep finding that every time I find a bug I just don't feel like type annotations would have helped catch it, at least not to an extent that justifies the effort to put them in in the first place.

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

#547

Post by harperlee »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #463
simonask wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is locally readable. Reasoning about larger systems in Python is where things get really hard, because you have to describe how many small individually readable things interact with each other in a very limited vocabulary.

hmm, yeah given LLM's ability to churn out lots of code quickly and be overly verbose in that code that is a potential downside. That it could in a quick one time edit create so much intellectual overhead that Python might be the wrong language to understand what is going on. What language do you feel is easier to reason about in the large?

I'd say Java, because it has a massive footprint amenable for training, and a strong type system (does not have sum types though and those are trendy).

You'd have to steer the LLM to use the style you want, and not massively overarchitect things though, but that's going to be an issue nonetheless.

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

#548

Post by regularfry »

toxik wrote: post #359
bushbaba wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool to see my hunch be backed by data. Python is a scripting language with OOP bolted on. Means there’s not really a styling consistency that other languages have, with things tending to look like PHP, a collection of various scripts that invoke one another

Python was designed with objects in mind from day one.

"Designed" is doing a lot of work here. There are clearly bits that are just bolted on because they didn't want to change the syntax.

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

#549

Post by sgt »

munksbeer wrote: post #507
sgt wrote: post #476

How about modern Java? Any experiences?

Disclaimer: I love writing production systems in Java. I was a C++ programmer for 10 years before moving to Java about 15 years ago. Java offers a virtually all in one package when writing large systems. You have a single language where you can write code that doesn't care to be the fastest possible, and you just rely on ZGC to do its thing, and it works. Or you can write GC free code with a mostly quite performant S…

Would be interesting to find out what kind of production systems you write in Java and how you deploy / scale them. What DB backends you use, caching, etc. And whether you're also on Spring.
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