Hacker News Reader

Comment by muragekibicho | Hacker News Reader

If you're interested in AI but dislike Python you can join the Anti Python AI club

We work together to build AI models in our favorite programming languages.

I feel that the only thing limiting my progress in AI is the Python programming language. I understand the math and the arxiv papers.

However, I experience something analogous to Dyslexia whenever I look at Python code. I wanted to build an open community for AI enthusiasts who want to work together to build models in our favorite programming languages.

I wanted to gauge interest before dedicating my time to this.

View on HN

I agree with your attitudes towards Python completely -- I'm a competent coder with a decade of experience, but find Python inscrutible for programs longer than 100 lines.

I would ask you to consider first: are there other efforts that you can join before deciding to strike out on your own? You are far from the first person to dislike Python, and there is very interesting work happening in the Elixir community around creating a viable alternative to Python for AI and Machine Learning. They are very capable folks, and I think spending some time looking at their work, what they're working on and why will do you well. There are also efforts in the Swift and Julia communities, but I'm personally less excited about those.

Check your LinkedIn messages.

As someone who has been far down this road and built libraries in other languages, I would espouse that this is mostly not worth time.

The community for ML is built around Python and C++, and you will be fighting upstream the whole way instead of just producing things that are useful to people.

Cuda is written in C++ so most of everything builds up from that. Python has great C++ interop, not many languages do. The scale of tooling that has been built in Python is not easily replicated. I've watched libraries come and go over the years as they finally realize they can't keep up and it takes a big community to tackle these problems.

You can learn a lot by writing ML in other languages, and I get it, Python leaves a lot to be desired, but if you want to build things that are truly useful, I would stick with the community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com