5 ms·

Well - I will say I like the general concept. I just wish it wasn't implemented in Scheme (only because I am not familiar with the language; looking at the sour

by cr0sh 8y ago

Well - I will say I like the general concept. I just wish it wasn't implemented in Scheme (only because I am not familiar with the language; looking at the source, though - I'm not sure I want to go there - it looks like a mashup of Pascal, Lisp, and RPN). It seems like today - and maybe I am wrong - but that data science and deep learning in general has pretty much "blessed" Python and C++ as the languages for such tasks. Had this been implemented in either, it might receive a wider audience. But maybe the concept itself is more important than the implementation? I can see that as possibly being the case... Great job in creating it; the end-tool by itself looks fun and promising!

dllthomas 8y ago
> it looks like a mashup of Pascal, Lisp, and RPN) Scheme is a classic Lisp dialect.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  You're not the only one who has said something to this effect, so maybe I do need to look into it more. Lisp is something I've tried to get into, but never went much beyond simple "hello world" implementations. So maybe I need to give it another shot.
seisvelas 8y ago
Ironically, I was only mildly interested in this before I read your comment and learned that it's in Scheme. Now I'm eager to check it out, haha.
- rectangletangle 8y ago
  This, I'm primarily into Python, but the fact this is written in LISP makes it interesting alone.
- bitwize 8y ago
  Me too! I was like holy smokes, it's in Scheme?! Make AI Lispy again!
formalsystem 8y ago
I wouldn't say that Python and C++ are the end all languages for ML. They do have a critical mass but I still think projects like OPs can still help us figure out what's a good interface for ML and learnings from smaller projects can inform the design and interface of larger projects (e.g: Keras API helped inform the new TF API). Also I'm suspicious that Tensorflow will be the Deep Learning library we'll use 5-10 years down the line so it's always nice to see smaller projects that try to do something different.
F-0X 8y ago
>I just wish it wasn't implemented in Scheme (only because I am not familiar with the language It is a functional-first, small and clean variety of lisp. A much more beefed-up cousin is Racket, but some implementations of scheme (in particular Guile and CHICKEN) have excellent ecosystems. Scheme is a language that deserves to be used more. It simplicity is deceptive. It is extremely powerful because although the basic components are simple, there is virtually no limitation on how they may be composed. There is literally only a single drawback to using Scheme (it might appear that being dynamically typed is a weakness, but both CHICKEN and Racket offer typed variants), is that it is sadly extremely unportable. The specification for Scheme is very small, and a large number of implementations exist which go beyond this standard - so basically none are compatible with eachother.
- Stevvo 8y ago
  You want others to be able to contribute to your codebase, humans don't think in a functional and deceptive manner; we think imperatively.
  - F-0X 8y ago
    Even so, you can write code imperatively in scheme, it's just a bit less natural. The keyword 'begin' has the same semantics as common lisp's 'progn', which allows imperative code to be written. I was careful to say "functional-first". Racket has a fully-fledged object system, too.
  - elcomet 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's true. You can get used to anything.
  - epr 8y ago
    Quite to the contrary, the limitations of functional languages are intended to make code easier to reason about for humans. Making small programs is one thing, but the combinatorial explosion in potential states as you approach large programs and systems of programs make it difficult to near impossible for humans to reason about software. You can only keep so much in your head at any given time.
madhadron 8y ago
> looking at the source, though - I'm not sure I want to go there - [Scheme] looks like a mashup of Pascal, Lisp, and RPN Cool, you got to discover Scheme today! It's one of the classical languages that defines the programming world we live in. > data science and deep learning in general has pretty much "blessed" Python and C++ as the languages for such tasks. It's reasonable to expect that the languages a community uses for its programs bear some proportionality to the broader programming community unless you have a very severe historical isolation of that community (i.e., MUMPS in medical informatics). Python and C++ are extremely common languages. You should expect the usual long tail of other languages as well. And under the hood, it's really all about CUDA anyway.
- microtherion 8y ago
  > Cool, you got to discover Scheme today! There's nothing wrong with implementing the tool in Scheme, but the problem is that typical ML frameworks implemented in Python use Python as their "glue" language (which already can be somewhat problematic performance wise). This approach is using a text serialization and sh as the glue language. Sure, it's conceptually neat, but for exploration, it's not even competitive with regular Python, let alone e.g. Python in a Jupyter notebook. I could see an approach using scheme itself as the exploratory glue language being quite competitive. Dropping down into shell pipelines is decidedly worse.
  - madhadron 8y ago
    I think the pipelines are absurd, too (actually, I think the entire Unix shell is a Rube Goldberg contraption that we would be better off without), but that's not the focus of the comment I was replying to.
cloudkj 8y ago
Author here; thanks for the feedback. The path to Scheme was a bit haphazard - I got into Clojure a few years ago after exposure to some nice Clojure-based tools at work, and then worked on implementing several classical machine learning techniques in Clojure for fun. When I came up with the idea of chaining and piping neural network layers on the command line, I also came across CHICKEN Scheme which promised to be portable and well-suited for translating the Clojure-based implementation I had previously done. As you can probably imagine, the porting process was a lot more involved than I expected, but nevertheless I had a BLASt (pun intended) hacking on it.
- lincpa 8y ago
  Clojure is ideal for Unix-style pipeline programming. Few people will use the command line for neural network inference, I think it would be better to use clojure to implement. [The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)
ken 8y ago
Your profile says you’re interested in the history of computing (even going so far as to learn PHP and BASIC). I’d say this is a perfect opportunity to learn Scheme, which is not only a great language but one of the most important languages in the history of the field.

by cr0sh 8y ago

dllthomas 8y ago

> it looks like a mashup of Pascal, Lisp, and RPN) Scheme is a classic Lisp dialect.

cr0sh 8y ago
You're not the only one who has said something to this effect, so maybe I do need to look into it more. Lisp is something I've tried to get into, but never went much beyond simple "hello world" implementations. So maybe I need to give it another shot.

seisvelas 8y ago

Ironically, I was only mildly interested in this before I read your comment and learned that it's in Scheme. Now I'm eager to check it out, haha.

rectangletangle 8y ago
This, I'm primarily into Python, but the fact this is written in LISP makes it interesting alone.
bitwize 8y ago
Me too! I was like holy smokes, it's in Scheme?! Make AI Lispy again!

formalsystem 8y ago

I wouldn't say that Python and C++ are the end all languages for ML. They do have a critical mass but I still think projects like OPs can still help us figure out what's a good interface for ML and learnings from smaller projects can inform the design and interface of larger projects (e.g: Keras API helped inform the new TF API). Also I'm suspicious that Tensorflow will be the Deep Learning library we'll use 5-10 years down the line so it's always nice to see smaller projects that try to do something different.

F-0X 8y ago

>I just wish it wasn't implemented in Scheme (only because I am not familiar with the language It is a functional-first, small and clean variety of lisp. A much more beefed-up cousin is Racket, but some implementations of scheme (in particular Guile and CHICKEN) have excellent ecosystems. Scheme is a language that deserves to be used more. It simplicity is deceptive. It is extremely powerful because although the basic components are simple, there is virtually no limitation on how they may be composed. There is literally only a single drawback to using Scheme (it might appear that being dynamically typed is a weakness, but both CHICKEN and Racket offer typed variants), is that it is sadly extremely unportable. The specification for Scheme is very small, and a large number of implementations exist which go beyond this standard - so basically none are compatible with eachother.

Stevvo 8y ago
You want others to be able to contribute to your codebase, humans don't think in a functional and deceptive manner; we think imperatively.
- F-0X 8y ago
  Even so, you can write code imperatively in scheme, it's just a bit less natural. The keyword 'begin' has the same semantics as common lisp's 'progn', which allows imperative code to be written. I was careful to say "functional-first". Racket has a fully-fledged object system, too.
- elcomet 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. You can get used to anything.
- epr 8y ago
  Quite to the contrary, the limitations of functional languages are intended to make code easier to reason about for humans. Making small programs is one thing, but the combinatorial explosion in potential states as you approach large programs and systems of programs make it difficult to near impossible for humans to reason about software. You can only keep so much in your head at any given time.

madhadron 8y ago

> looking at the source, though - I'm not sure I want to go there - [Scheme] looks like a mashup of Pascal, Lisp, and RPN Cool, you got to discover Scheme today! It's one of the classical languages that defines the programming world we live in. > data science and deep learning in general has pretty much "blessed" Python and C++ as the languages for such tasks. It's reasonable to expect that the languages a community uses for its programs bear some proportionality to the broader programming community unless you have a very severe historical isolation of that community (i.e., MUMPS in medical informatics). Python and C++ are extremely common languages. You should expect the usual long tail of other languages as well. And under the hood, it's really all about CUDA anyway.

microtherion 8y ago
> Cool, you got to discover Scheme today! There's nothing wrong with implementing the tool in Scheme, but the problem is that typical ML frameworks implemented in Python use Python as their "glue" language (which already can be somewhat problematic performance wise). This approach is using a text serialization and sh as the glue language. Sure, it's conceptually neat, but for exploration, it's not even competitive with regular Python, let alone e.g. Python in a Jupyter notebook. I could see an approach using scheme itself as the exploratory glue language being quite competitive. Dropping down into shell pipelines is decidedly worse.
- madhadron 8y ago
  I think the pipelines are absurd, too (actually, I think the entire Unix shell is a Rube Goldberg contraption that we would be better off without), but that's not the focus of the comment I was replying to.

cloudkj 8y ago

Author here; thanks for the feedback. The path to Scheme was a bit haphazard - I got into Clojure a few years ago after exposure to some nice Clojure-based tools at work, and then worked on implementing several classical machine learning techniques in Clojure for fun. When I came up with the idea of chaining and piping neural network layers on the command line, I also came across CHICKEN Scheme which promised to be portable and well-suited for translating the Clojure-based implementation I had previously done. As you can probably imagine, the porting process was a lot more involved than I expected, but nevertheless I had a BLASt (pun intended) hacking on it.

lincpa 8y ago
Clojure is ideal for Unix-style pipeline programming. Few people will use the command line for neural network inference, I think it would be better to use clojure to implement. [The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)

ken 8y ago

Your profile says you’re interested in the history of computing (even going so far as to learn PHP and BASIC). I’d say this is a perfect opportunity to learn Scheme, which is not only a great language but one of the most important languages in the history of the field.