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0 pointschis3mo ago0 comments

It's really funny how much better the AI is at writing python and javascript than it is C/C++. For one thing it proves the point that those languages really are just way harder to write. And another thing, it's funny that the AI makes the exact same mistakes a human would in C++. I don't know if it's that the AI was trained on human mistakes, or just that these languages have such strong wells of footguns that even an alien intelligence gets trapped in them.

So in essense I have to disagree with the author's suggestion to vibe code in C instead of Python. I think the python usability features that were made for humans actually help the AI the exact same ways.

There are all kinds of other ways that vibe coding should change one's design though. It's way easier now to roll your own version of some UI or utility library instead of importing one to save time. It's way easier now to drop down into C++ for a critical section and have the AI handle the annoying data marshalling. Things like that are the real unlock in my opinion.

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jesse__3mo ago

I don't think it has much to do with the languages being harder .. the training sets for JS and Python are probably an order of magnitude larger.

Supermancho3mo ago

More examples/better models and less footguns. In programming, the fewer (assumed correct) abstractions, the more room for error. Humans learned this awhile ago, which is why your average programmer doesn't remember a lick of ASM, or have to. One of the reasons I don't trust vibe coding lower level languages is that I don't have multiple tools with which to cross check the AI output. Even the best AI models routinely produce code that does not compile, much less account for all side effects. Often, the output outright curtails functionality. It casually makes tradeoffs that a human would not make (usually). In C, AI use is a dangerous proposition.

nine_k3mo ago

The amount of freely available C code must be very large. Good C code, significantly smaller :-\

monegator3mo ago

> I don't know if it's that the AI was trained on human mistakes, or just that these languages have such strong wells of footguns that even an alien intelligence gets trapped in them.

First one. Most of C code you can find out there is either oneliners or shit, there are fewer bigger projects for the LLMs to train on, compared to python and typescript

And once we go to the embedded space, the LLMs are trained on manufacturer written/autogenerated code, which is usually full of inaccuracies (mismatched comments) bugs and bat practices

UncleOxidant3mo ago

> It's really funny how much better the AI is at writing python and javascript than it is C/C++. For one thing it proves the point that those languages really are just way harder to write.

I have not found this to be the case. I mean, yeah, they're really good with Python and yeah that's a lot easier, but I had one recently (IIRC it was the pre-release GPT5.1) code me up a simulator for a kind of a microcoded state machine in C++ and it did amazingly well - almost in one-shot. It can single-step through the microcode, examine IOs, allows you to set input values, etc. I was quite impressed. (I had asked it to look at the C code for a compiler that targets this microcoded state machine in addition to some Verilog that implements the machine in order for it to figure out what the simulator should be doing). I didn't have high expectations going in, but was very pleasantly surprised to have a working simulator with single-stepping capabilities within an afternoon all in what seems to be pretty-well written C++.

srcreigh3mo ago

I mean, there's C, and then there's C++. I've found AI to be pretty okay at C.

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