Comment by brianwawok
21 hours ago
In the world of AI written code, Python just doesn’t make sense. Converted about 100k lines in the last few months to golang and the performance is life changing. Curious if we will see global Python adoption fall by 75% or more in the next few years.
I think humans are still accountable for the code generated by agents.
You are free to switch language but you still need to understand it.
With a similar amount of experience with both languages I found Go much easier to read. I've always been a bit miffed why Python is seen as easy to read for experienced developers. I get the syntax is good for short code or people with little experience but my experience is those readability benefits went away quickly with time or complexity.
Why are you miffed about it? I legitimately hate reading golang with passion and find python to be pretty intuitive, outside of the odd ambitious list comprehensions. I worked in a golang shop for several years, so it's not just an familiarity situation either.
We are just different. That's not something to be mad about.
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Any language that uses error codes instead of exceptions is a non-starter for me. Produces code that craps all over the happy path.
Python has a different problem: it is slow as f---. I did a micro benchmark comparison against 5 other languages in preparation for my python replacement language. Outside of dictionary lookups, it is 50-600 times slower than C depending on the workload.
Go, Rust etc are fine. They land at 1.25-3x slower than C. But I prefer the readability of python minus its dynamic nature.
nothing about the performance characteristics of python changed with AI so why would you use python over golang if performance is a requirement/bottleneck? Trying to understand the reasoning as to me golang and python are equally simple to write and understand.
If language X is a persons comfort zone, that person will often default to it. Python is certainly more widespread then go.
Also, even if it looks like that to you, there are still people that write code with their own hands.
Regardless of whether golang and python are actually equally simple, python certainly has the reputation of being easier to write and read than almost any other language. That is a big part of its popularity.
Python is not really simple though, the semantics are actually quite bonkers. It just has "simple"-looking syntax, but that only helps you for trivial programs where the bonkers semantics does not get in the way.
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I think we'll eventually be generating machine code directly. But until then we should be using code that our team can actually read and understand. If you know go, then that works you, Not everyone does.
Doubt it. LLMs will always be more expensive per-token than compilers, and high level languages need fewer tokens than machine code. Also, type systems, warnings, overlap with natural language in names - those are very useful.
For personal projects, yes. For code going into production, you still need human code review, and that has to happen in a language that the humans you've hired are comfortable with. One day, we'll all be YOLOing vibe code straight into production, but that day is not today.
But that day is not today .. unless you are working for microslop or clownflare ? Half-kidding, sorry :)