Is Python Becoming Pinyin?

Is Python Becoming Pinyin?(lernerpython.com)

39 points by reuven 5 hours ago | 51 comments

drob518 35 minutes ago |

The post focuses on Python, but I think it touches on an interesting question before skipping past it: ideally, what language would be best for our AIs to be programming in? The article says Rust. But can we do better? Rust has strong typing and memory guarantees which I think are important, but it’s also slower to compile. If we’re going to be doing agentic programming, where the agent is operating in a tight loop, iterating on the code, then it seems like we’d want something that can be faster to run after creating new code. Effectively, we’d want the agentic equivalent of a Lisp REPL, but optimized for the agent, or at least a language that compiles quickly, as it is run. This is one of the roles that Python plays today. Perhaps there is also a slow, sophisticated compiler that digests the same syntax and spits out the fastest , most secure code possible once the agent has iterated its way to the final answer.

noon-raccoon 1 hour ago |

If you don't know what is Pinyin I googled it for you (I didn't know what it is):

Pinyin is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese sounds using the Latin alphabet. Pinyin is commonly used for learning Chinese pronunciation and for typing Chinese characters.

crazylogger 1 hour ago | |

> It might seem weird for us to teach beginners Python, knowing that they’ll then have agents output other, faster languages. I see an analogy here with Chinese: Many people don’t realize this, but children in China first learn Latin characters, which they use to spell out Chinese phonetically, using a system called “pinyin.” They then use their knowledge of Latin characters to learn Chinese characters, whose pronunciation isn’t obvious from the characters themselves.

The article did explain, albeit near the end.

faitswulff 57 minutes ago | | |

Pinyin is widely used, but pinyin’s primacy is oversold. Chinese texts start with teaching Chinese characters - many are recognizable to children from daily exposure to begin with, so they don’t need the pinyin. Pinyin only comes in when the character is genuinely unknown.

sthix 59 minutes ago |

Interesting take. Python is my first language, but when working with AI for my latest desktop project I just used Rust because of the performance.

superze 34 minutes ago | |

Wat

spjt 58 minutes ago |

Why teach people bad habits starting out? Probably dating myself specifically but I started out with Pascal, and I'm glad I did.

usernametaken29 1 hour ago |

It’s funny because I consider myself a Python veteran - about a decade or so of Python, and I had exactly the same thought. 99% of my code now is Java. It’s much less pleasant but the “enterprise nobs” just work. Static types, fast with Graal, awesome threading, and the quality of tooling are great - those are all areas that Python severely lacks in and has no interest expanding into, because it is a “fast prototype language”. That fast prototyping can now be done in annoying but stable languages like Java or Go or Rust (or NET or Swift). So that cuts a massive leg from Python. Who will bother to maintain the ecosystem if a lot of senior folks are leaving in doves? No idea honestly

Hendrikto 1 hour ago | |

> quality of tooling are subpar - those are all areas that Python severely lacks in

I do not think subpar means what you think. Or maybe you rewrote the sentence and forgot to change that word? Anyway, this does not make sense.

usernametaken29 1 hour ago | | |

Indeed, wrong word

noon-raccoon 4 hours ago |

Python has wonderful set of libraries so it is probably going to stay with us for a while. However, I suspect major takeover by Typescript (despite I like Python more).

DonsDiscountGas 1 hour ago |

> Why ask AI to write its output in a dynamic language with relatively slow execution (i.e., Python)?

So that it's easy for humans to review it. Same reason as ever. Obviously Python isn't always the correct choice, but the overlap with cases where vibe coding is the correct choice is pretty high.

Also wtf is Pinyin?

dkdbejwi383 1 hour ago | |

> Also wtf is Pinyin?

From the article:

> Many people don’t realize this, but children in China first learn Latin characters, which they use to spell out Chinese phonetically, using a system called “pinyin.” They then use their knowledge of Latin characters to learn Chinese characters, whose pronunciation isn’t obvious from the characters themselves.

kleiba2 1 hour ago |

If we're not writing code by hand anymore anyway, why not skip programming languages altogether and have the AI output machine code right away?

usernametaken29 1 hour ago | |

Code isn’t just execution, code is also abstraction. You need to be able to understand requirement => unit of work. Unless you’re an uber geek this mostly isn’t the case and reading and retaining any amount of assembly will be practically impossible. In a wishful world you could simply have a bunch of markdown specifications that are executed as machine code. But specifications are by design usually ambiguous, and so you need to build some level of abstraction to be able to accommodate and still understand that. That’s what code does, or should do

ftmootnomoat 1 hour ago | |

Code is for human consumption. Believe it or not, some of us like to understand how things work.

1PlayerOne 1 hour ago | |

Well you can read python, you can't read machine code...

xigoi 52 minutes ago | | |

“Vibe coders” don’t read the code their LLM produces. That’s the whole point.

fragmede 1 hour ago | |

It's not portable and in today's world, you have x86 and ARM to contend with. My argument is that should make Java the default language for LLM output.

JCTheDenthog 50 minutes ago | | |

Then you could have it output LLVM IR