A recent study by Tencent showed that Elixir had the highest completion rate across models when compared among 20 different programming languages. In this article, we explore the reasons why that may be the case and how that extrapolates to coding agents.
  • revolutionaryvole
    3·
    1 month ago

    For all the people downvoting - despite what the clickbaity title might suggest this is not a slop post by some AI evangelist.

    This is in fact an article by Elixir creator José Valim, where he comments on a recent study which showed that models had on average much better performance using Elixir to solve problems out of the 20 languages tested.

    He makes some solid arguments to explain why that could be the case and why Elixir is particularly easy to work with for LLMs as well as humans.

    • lad@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      I think I saw an article (not based on this study, and I’m not sure based on anything) that claimed a different language to be the same ‘best for AI’

      I expect we may see more, and each time we may come up with some explanation of why, of course. Still maybe I should learn Elixir, it sounds decent

      • revolutionaryvole
        4·
        1 month ago

        Oh it’s a great language, I honestly haven’t met anyone who started writing Elixir and didn’t end up loving it. If you have the time I definitely recommend it.

          • revolutionaryvole
            2·
            1 month ago

            It’s still a rare opportunity unfortunately, I count myself as extremely lucky to have used it in a previous job!

              • revolutionaryvole
                4·
                1 month ago

                Our entire backend was Elixir-based.

                • Phoenix webserver providing an API service for our clients
                • ETL pipelines using Broadway to ingest clients’ data
                • processing of the data entirely within the BEAM, mostly native Elixir but with some small parts using other languages through NIFs for performance or compatibility reasons

                There were a lot more components involved but I don’t want to go into too much detail. It was a real joy to work with though, and I’ll definitely choose Elixir for any future projects unless there are specific reasons requiring something else.

                • eta@feddit.orgEnglish
                  2·
                  1 month ago

                  Thanks for the insight. I’ve started learning Elixir some months ago and while it is a little difficult to get into for me I can see that once you know the basics it can be very powerful. However I’m not a programmer so I’ll probably only use it for hobby projects.

  • gaiety@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    1·
    1 month ago

    even if this isn’t a slop post and the author is credible, timing my friend. LLMs being used for good things is by far the exception to the rule