4 ms·

What does "differentiable programming" mean? When I've looked up the term before it seems to relate to differentiation in the conventional mathematical, numeric

• Athas 7y ago
  I haven't read the paper yet, but I think it's exactly about differentiating (semi-)arbitrary functions written in a conventional-ish programming language.
  • keithalewis 7y ago
    See https://github.com/keithalewis/epsilon https://github.com/keithalewis/epsilon for my approach to solving this problem.
• lonelappde 7y ago
  It's a new name for computing neural network weights, by analogy to "linear programming" , where the program is optimizing a mathematical loss function with approximate real-number parameters (as opposed to a program that computes a precise result with Boolean /integer logic (such as a web server or a database)). Mathematically, it's analysis on parameters. Confusingly and beautifully, there is also "mechanical differentiation" on the algebra of data of types, another computer application of the same abstract mathematical concept of differentiation: https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Mechanical_Differentiation https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Mechanical_D... Read about both at http://conal.net/blog/tag/derivative http://conal.net/blog/tag/derivative
  • tempguy9999 7y ago
    Ta for the NN stuff. I have come across differentiation of ADTs and very strange it is too. I can't understand how it works, it's so weird. I'll try to follow your links. Thanks!