What will the machines write

I've decided to start writing about my projects. This is the first post, so it's about the website it's posted on. It's a simple markdown-based site I built yesterday with Kotlin and Ktor. This is the first time I've built something with Kotlin compared to my usual go-to language which is Elixir. I also have been learning Rust and use Python/TypeScript when necessary.

Recently I've been thinking about what languages are best for building software with generative models. The characteristics I've identified are readability, a strong static type system, garbage collection, and a large ecosystem is a plus. I want to know that generated code that compiles will maintain certain invariants and won't break my application. I also need to be able to jump into large generated codebases that have gone off the rails and understand them at a glance. Tests are useful to generate as well, but you have to review them to see if they catch anything worthwhile. Conversely, if you define some abstractions in the core that the compiler enforces, and those files haven't changed, you can rely on that to some greater extent.

For these reasons, I'm trying out Kotlin. Its type system seems expressive enough while being straightforward to understand. I still plan to use Elixir and Rust for their strengths, but as a default backend language I'm starting here with my personal software. My prediction is that I'll be deleting more generated code than I write by the end of the year.