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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?

#631

Post by DeathArrow »

stephbook wrote: post #353
pier25 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah C# is fantastic. I also love EF. I stopped using it because overall it feels like Microsoft has lost the plot with .NET.

What I hate about .NET is the atrocious naming. Net Core, Net Framework, Net Common Core, .NET.. And God forbid any of these frameworks ever expose what they are in a config file. You start a project, hand it to a colleague and he can't figure out whether it's Framework or Core by looking at the files. You Google and are immediately bombarded by 15 year old threads.

Most web projects use JSON files for configuration. There are also some XML files for project configuration. If anything, you can run into too much configuration files.

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

#632

Post by kode-targz »

iLemming wrote: post #66
niek_pas wrote: post #2

Bit off topic but why in the world are people still posting on medium? The reading experience is abhorrent; I couldn’t even finish reading this article before a full screen popup literally blocked the sentence I was reading. Is there some incentive I’m not seeing?

> The reading experience is abhorrent Nothing you read in the browser can provide ultimately great and hands-down the best reading experience equally for everybody - the modern web model is inherently at odds with that. A plain HTML page with no CSS is a near-perfect reading experience. The problem is that almost nobody ships that, because the web also became a publishing platform where authors compete for attention.…

do you use emacs?

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

#633

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #152

Better question is why use any code? Generate random functions and select based on measuring the distribution of output of these functions against metrics of interest. A pure black box of instruction that is more performant than any verbose code or algorithm we could come up with, because all we select for is performance above all. Directed evolution essentially of the codebase, generated through mutation and selecti…

[deleted]

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

#634

Post by stingraycharles »

smoe wrote: post #596
BariumBlue wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, I was just thinking that Python likely has a vast ocean of training data, but it's likely of lower quality, being much of it is written by beginners and those who aren't primarily programmers.

Having used Python on and off for 20 years, my experience with LLMs writing Python has been mixed. I don’t think that’s necessarily because of a low-quality dataset, but rather because Python’s applications are so broad and the language has gone through several paradigm shifts over time: sync vs. async, typed vs. untyped, scientific Python looking very different from web application code, some people really wishing i…

> Having used Python on and off for 20 years, my experience with LLMs writing Python has been mixed. I don’t think that’s necessarily because of a low-quality dataset, but rather because Python’s applications are so broad and the language has gone through several paradigm shifts over time

If there’s one language that is the prime example of this, it’s C++, and according to this benchmark it ranks incredibly high.

I’m also thoroughly confused why Kimi 2.6 scores 83% while Opus 4.7 scores 67% for C++, GPT5.5 isn’t even in the top10.

Gemma 4 31B scores 100% success rate for Python (!!) while Opus 4.6 only 65%.

This benchmark really seems to be all over the place and doesn’t make sense.

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

#635

Post by kuboble »

pjerem wrote: post #589
jimmaswell wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# is as close to an ideal language as you can get for most things IMO. I find AI does a great job with it.

I do agree. C# is an hidden gem for IA. There are not that much different ways to get somewhere so the model have probably been trained on the framework and libraries everybody uses (the Microsoft ones). Compared to most languages, including Java, C# will have a hard time letting you compile incoherent code. You barely need any dependencies other than aspnetcore and efcore for most applications and your AI knows them…

I definitely agree with the sentiment. However this part.

> There are not that much different ways to get somewhere

This is far from true. C# is a language where you can operate on the raw pointers through unsafe keyword. On the other end of the spectrum, you can have duck-typing in dynamic blocks.

For operating on collections you can use old style loops, or chain of lambdas or sql like syntax.

I have been coding in C# old school way for most of my life at this point, and I feel like I'm in a foreign land reading code from some other C# projects.

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

#637

Post by [deleted] »

javier123454321 wrote: post #582
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…

No, I think the argument from the article is pretty good. Use a language that has a lot of guard rails built in.

[deleted]

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

#638

Post by matsemann »

DaanDL wrote: post #479
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…

I never really understood what exactly is so readable about python. I've been developing in Python for 8 years now, and before that I was a C# developer, and I don't find Python to be that more readable. Sure there's less ceremony, and yes, you can have your project going with just a single file, but other than that...?

I agree. My kotlin is readable. The functional code with typing all the way tells what every step is doing. My same code in python is a hot mess of nested list comprehensions and lacking lambdas.

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

#639

Post by echelon »

pshirshov wrote: post #613

No reason, unless the project is simple. The more you can offload onto your compiler/typer - the shorter is the feedback loop, the better agents work. Lack of strictly enforced static typing make agents fail much sooner with Python. In my opinion, Rust and Scala are the best targets for agentic flows - and, coincidentally, they have the most advanced typers among mainstream languages. But any statically typed languag…

Rust is a fantastic language to emit from AI.

Studies report that the language design tends to result in lower defect code (vs peers such as Go and Java) due to how the syntax aids error handling, logic flow, and API design.

You don't need to know Rust to begin using it. You'll learn it quickly enough.

The code is easy to read, and Serde makes parsing, especially JSON, extremely pleasant. Writing HTTP services is a breeze.

AI makes Rust development go 10x faster. The borrow checker isn't even an issue. It's invisible now. You almost never hit it anyway when you write web services, but now it's no issue at all when writing highly concurrent code too. Claude etc. emit the correct code and lifetimes, and it's entirely ergonomic and idiomatic.

The biggest problem with Rust is the compile time.

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

#640

Post by andy12_ »

In my case, because ML research is mainly done with Python+Torch, and if you want people to use your code, you must provide them with python. If it wasn't for that, my dream would be to do ML research in a statically compiled language that allowed me to annotate tensor dimensions.
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