alt Hacker NewsIt’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 saying that Rust or Go is unreadable, but I know I am better at Python personally and am going to keep using it until the speed penalty matters to my project, and then maybe I’ll let an AI rewrite the whole thing in a faster language.
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I'd argue that while Rust has a high barrier to writing code due to lifetimes and other type constraints, its still quite easy to read.
(Kind of the inverse of perl)
> 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 think the idea is that languages like Python and JavaScript make it easier for humans to write the initial implementation, whereas the "hard" languages from the perspective of creating the minimum viable product are the ones that make it easier for humans to maintain the code, and this has historically been a major trade off.
Whereas if you have the AI write the initial implementation...
> 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.
Did you read the article? I think you're arguing against a strawman.
I’ve always found Ruby to be way more readable, what keeps me using python is the depth of libraries is unmatched.
So unless you’re into burning tokens having AI generate untested libraries, I’d stick to using the most idiomatic tool for the problem you are tackling.