Hackaday Podcast Ep 340: The Best Programming Language, Space Surgery, and Hacking Two 3D Printers into One
Oct 3, 2025
Elliot and Al delve into what the IEEE considers the best programming languages of 2025, discussing Python's dominance and the impact of AI on programming jobs. They explore a quirky robot bartending hack, and a minimalist analog drum machine design. Excitingly, they investigate cannibalizing two 3D printers to create a more advanced one, and the fascinating challenge of performing surgery in space. Plus, a peek into a Fortran flight simulator being ported to Unity adds to the tech thrills. Don't miss their take on various innovative projects!
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
AI Is Changing How We Measure Language Popularity
- IEEE rankings show Python dominates but language families (C, JavaScript) shift perspective on popularity.
- Al and Elliot argue AI will further blur language boundaries and metrics will become poisoned.
LLMs Could Be The New Compiler
- They predict LLMs may become the new compiler, generating code from specs and raising test-driven importance.
- This shifts programming toward systems engineering and away from language syntax choices.
Treat LLM Code Like Untrusted Input
- Write thorough tests and guardrails when using LLM-generated code to catch hallucinations and unexpected behavior.
- Treat the model output as something to validate, not blindly trust, especially for edge cases.
