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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?

#941

Post by chamomeal »

kraf wrote: post #578
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.

That's what I'm thinking too. There is a lot of noise and I know teams where the majority of the people writing Python just have no idea what they're doing. I'm working with Clojure which is used mostly by senior engineers and it still blows my mind how well Claude writes software in it even though it's a fringe language. It's even able to pick up in-house DSLs written with macros.

Was looking for somebody to mention that LLMs are weirdly good at clojure! Have you tried hooking your LLM up to a repl? It’s crazy stuff. Type systems are a great feedback loop, but a LLM with a REPL is something else. Much more dangerous though!!

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

#942

Post by chamomeal »

regularfry wrote: post #541
isityettime wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 toda…

I don’t know, I think it might be fundamental. They think in tokens, and )))))))) might look equivalent to ))))))). Just like the strawberry problem.

The calva backseat driver extension even includes a specific paren balancer for this reason, and it works quite well

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

#943

Post by chamomeal »

causal wrote: post #857
arikrahman wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree, LLM's benefit from jacking in to the powerful nREPL dynamic languages in the Lisp family like Clojure, letting the agent manipulate the code in unprecedented ways.

"manipulate the code in unprecedented ways" is pretty vague and of uncertain value, can you elaborate?

The LLM can evaluate any chunk of code at any time and see the result/errors. It lets it iteratively build solutions up, like how a human does. It also lets it verify that everything works before saying “done!”

It can even use REPL access to investigate bugs, cause it can run whatever inputs it wants on whatever functions it wants. It can tweak functions and retry stuff. It’s really ridiculously cool. AI programming with clojure is nuts. It can solve WAY harder problems, including with libraries and domains it’s never seen before, cause it can struggle through em just like a person would!

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

#944

Post by nrub »

rglullis wrote: post #861
nrub wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joking? - strong typing - real concurrency (heaven forbid you want a background task without having to spool up an external message queue and worker) - immutability - limitations in error handling (sort of just typing really) - limitations in nullability (also typing) - memory layout is usually hidden or abstracted away - no actual private methods or classes That's far from a complete list, but maybe you're takin…

So, the abstractions are there, you just happen to think that the implementations are flawed or limited. This is not the same as claiming they are lacking.

No, they're not there. Did you read my comment? It's not just flawed or limited implementation, those are things that python just doesn't have.

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

#945

Post by bioneuralnet »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #527
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…

> 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. But it's LLMs that read it not humans. At least that's the trend > Use a language that has a large training set so the LLM can be most efficient. It's pretty efficient with Rust.

One could argue that with AI writing so much code, the ease with which humans can read & understand it (for review purposes) is even more important than before.

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

#946

Post by gwern »

fsckboy wrote: post #355
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?

his comment is that any self respecting article ought to have been written by AI, and if so it should have been written in Lojban. > 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? your comment seems to have not gotten his joke which was a recursion on English of the point of the article vis a vis Python

I understood his joke just fine. I just disagree, because I think he missed that it was AI-written in a way which is actually already implementing his suggestion of 'lowering' the original high-level human input into a more rigid, formalized schematic, easily-parsed language, which I call "AInglish", and which we increasingly are all communicating in, as exemplified by OP, due to the fact that many people find it superior and more enjoyable and more understandable, as is not too much of a surprise given the goals of the chatbot training process and cognitive offloading/deskilling. (As the joke goes, the LLM will expand out my short prompt for an email or blog post, and their LLM will summarize it for them...)

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

#947

Post by zahlman »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #627
zahlman wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find brackets help me understand structure from a distance much better than whitespace. I can't imagine how. Whitespace physically lays out the block structure on the screen; braces expect you to count and balance matching symbols, and possibly scan for them within other line noise.

This is a 00s POV. If you spend any time on syntax formatting in 2026, you're wasting it. It's a solved problem. Any reasonable language with braces has standard formatter that will just put each brace level on a different whitespace level.

Yes, and so will any reasonable text editor automatically indent to the most likely position, and remove an entire indentation level with backspace, and substitute spaces for tabs per community standards, and keep everything lined up neatly.

But GGP was making a claim about the braces themselves solving the problem, and they clearly do not. The indentation automatically inserted by your tooling solves the problem. And it's at least as easy to communicate the intended block structure with colons and backspaces as with open braces and close braces, plus it doesn't waste lines (or invite bikeshedding) for the closing braces.

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

#948

Post by zahlman »

polytely wrote: post #558
zahlman wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find brackets help me understand structure from a distance much better than whitespace. I can't imagine how. Whitespace physically lays out the block structure on the screen; braces expect you to count and balance matching symbols, and possibly scan for them within other line noise.

Working in C# i feel basically still read code structure by the visual block structure / indentation. I dont think I've ever counted braces in my professional life. The IDE makes sure it is formatted correctly and ambiguity is basically impossible.

Exactly. So if the indentation is the actually salient thing, why not use it directly?

I mean: you don't count the braces because your tooling counts them and makes the indentation match what Python would use anyway. If you had just created that indentation in the first place (which with a proper editor is at least as easy as typing the braces; you essentially type : instead of {, and backspace instead of } ) then you'd be in the same place, except without the extra punctuation noise (well, with half of it, because GvR thought the colons were a useful signal even if redundant).

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

#949

Post by zahlman »

forlorn_mammoth wrote: post #701
zahlman wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are messing up indentation accidentally during refactoring there is either something wrong with your tooling (including your text editor) or you are letting things get too far out of hand before starting the refactoring.

It's 2026. I'm using Jupyter notebooks in Databricks. Guess what my tooling (including my "text editor", the Jupyter notebook), does not do? Yes, I can castle-[ to shift a block of code left or right, but this is not always problem-free nor is it automatic nor does it have any sense of where the indents should go. Yes, there is a "format python properly" button which often errors out says "there is an indentation err…

> Would I like to use better tooling? I present my .vim file as evidence. Am I using what they tell me is state of the art? yes. And in 2026, state of the art does not solve python indenting, because python indenting is inherently a broken paradigm

I don't know what to tell you. I use Vim and find it trivial to get the indentation right using my distro's stock config.

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

#950

Post by zahlman »

RHSeeger wrote: post #673
zahlman wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are messing up indentation accidentally during refactoring there is either something wrong with your tooling (including your text editor) or you are letting things get too far out of hand before starting the refactoring.

Ah, the old "you're doing it wrong" argument. Moving code from one place to another (copy/paste from online or just from one file to another) is a fairly common source of bugs for a lot of people when it comes to Python. At some point, it becomes clear is an issue with the language, not the people. I enjoy Python, but the significant whitespace is _not_ one of the reasons.

> Moving code from one place to another (copy/paste from online or just from one file to another) is a fairly common source of bugs for a lot of people when it comes to Python.

I genuinely don't understand how they manage this. Worst case, you paste at column 1, re-select and tab such that the baseline is appropriate for where you're pasting it, which is obvious. But more importantly, you shouldn't be copying and pasting unless you're proficient enough to fix such mistakes easily.

I also don't understand how it can be argued seriously that braces avoid the problem. If you'd paste at the wrong indentation level, why would you not equally well type the wrong number of braces?

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