Ask HN: Python’s Prospects in a Copiloted World

6 points by jamesralph8555 3 years ago | 5 comments

Given that models are emerging that can write code at a competent level, do you think the attractiveness of dynamically typed languages like python will diminish while statically typed languages like C++ and rust will become more popular?

My thought process here is that languages like python are easy for humans to write, but hard for computers to validate. The advantages somewhat go away when code can be written by a model. Meanwhile, the disadvantages such as poorer maintainability and performance of these languages would still exist.

tacostakohashi 3 years ago |

I see this cycle where simplified "scripting" languages for "non-programmers" never last.

See: BASIC, perl, php, 4GL languages, etc.

The cycle goes like this:

1. A new simplified language for non-programmers is created

2. Non-programmers jump on board and get as far as they can...

3. Now they need just a little bit more from the language, so it is added (for perl, that was perl5 with OO, use strict, etc, for php, also the OO stuff when they turned it into java, for python, it's python3)

4. The non-programmers have become programmers, and the language has become a bit of a mess, so former non-programmers jump to C++ or Java or Clojure, and next generation of non-programmers don't like the look of the now complicated mess of a language, so back to step 1.

I guess it also doesn't help that a lot of these non-programmer languages are tightly coupled with some particular use case, like server side web apps for php, or "data science" for php, once that goes away, there isn't much of a general-purpose language left.

Anyway, yes, the appeal of C++, rust, Java, etc is definitely more stable over time - nobody learns those because they are simple, and drops them when it turns out not to be the case.

ipaddr 3 years ago | |

People are dropping C++ for rust because memory management is hard. People are dropping Java for golang because it's easier. People are not dropping php for Ruby because Ruby is easier to learn they drop it because wasn't it's not as cool at the time. No one left jQuery for react because jQuery was too hard.

My assembly knowledge is wasted today replaced by these higher level languages.

midwesternerer 3 years ago | |

Python is not tightly coupled to data science by any stretch of the imagination. The data science parts of the language have no impact on the other use cases. It isn't like someone is forcing you to use a pandas dataframe as the backend to your Django website.

qup 3 years ago |

I think that we'll have to keep optimizing for human readability while we still cannot trust the code.

In the future, perhaps we can let it write whatever language best suits the task. Or perhaps we'll design a programming language specifically intended to be used by LLMs. (Or let the LLMs design it)

jawmes8 3 years ago |

Anecdotally, using GPT-4 with Typescript has made its code output much cleaner.