You can still do that, most of the times. But if your function has many conditionals the final expression may get cumbersome. Sometimes, the symbolic derivati

You can still do that, most of the times. But if your function has many conditionals the final expression may get cumbersome. Sometimes, the symbolic derivatives will be faster to compute, but most often they will be slower than using dual numbers for example. It is just a different tool to solve the problem. Most often, it is easier to use: you do not need a computer algebra system, you just change the type of your numbers and call it a day.