Is Python Becoming Pinyin?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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

> 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?

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?