5 ms·

I wonder what's going to happen to tensorflow Swift now, seemed like Chris was the main champion there.

pjmlp 7y ago
It will most likely fade away. Swift for Tensorflow could never be taken seriously outside Apple community. On Linux, Foundation barely works and one still needs to selectively do either import Darwin or import Glibc for basic IO stuff. Then we are already at Swift 5.1, and Windows version has to be built from source will lots of caveats. How can it even be taken seriously against Julia, Tensorflow for C++, ML.NET all of which work across macOS, Linux and Windows as of today, and offer the same strong typing benefits?
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  sadly i agree with you. initially i was really excited about S4TF because swift is a fantastic language and it would be a fantastic replacement for python as the defacto ML language. but then i realized tensorflow is much worse than pytorch and the S4TF team was too small to build anything substantive enough to win market share.
- flipgimble 7y ago
  While I agree there is an even chance that Google will allow S4TF to fade away after Lattner's departure, that is more of a reflection on the company having no commitment or consistency to good ideas: ex: https://gcemetery.co https://gcemetery.co However S4TF should be taken seriously if you understand what they are trying to accomplish and how deeply they designed machine learning support into the language. Take a look at http://fast.ai http://fast.ai new course offerings using S4TF. Swift has always been a long bet. If it doesn't work as you want it, is still short sighted to discount it in the future. also: https://twitter.com/JokerEph/status/1221831507351748608 https://twitter.com/JokerEph/status/1221831507351748608
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I will count on it, when it isn't used to sell Google VMs and works on my machine as easy as Julia and ML.NET work today. I wasn't even aware of http://fast.ai's http://fast.ai's existence.
  - nl 7y ago
    With all due reference to Jeremy and Fast.AI (which I love and continue to recommend) I think it's fair to say they don't stick with things for a long time. I think the Fast.AI python library has been re-written 3 times in the past 3 years (Keras -> PyTorch -> PyTorch, differently).
- nestorD 7y ago
  I love the idea of Swift for Tensorflow : powerful automatic differentiation and a solid type system in a single language. That's something that is not seen elsewhere and that would make it a perfect fit to write deep learning code targeting production systems. Now the language needs two things in order to be safe from an hypothetical abandon from Google : - running smoothly on linux (I though it was already there but your post seem to imply that it is not the case) - getting the auto-diff out of the alpha stage where people can build framework on top of it (fastai seem to be ready to jump on that ball which is nice)
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Here, https://swift.org/getting-started/#using-the-repl https://swift.org/getting-started/#using-the-repl > On macOS 1> import Darwin 2> arc4random_uniform(10) $R0: UInt32 = 4 > On Linux 1> import Glibc 2> random() % 10 $R0: Int32 = 4 Any of the languages that Swift is competing against, doesn't need to have OS specific imports for basic stuff.
    - zer0zzz 7y ago
      Dude you’re literally illustrating Swifts strength here. The whole point is to have a safe easy to use language that reuses existing system libraries.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Any mainstream programming language can do that.
        coldtea 7y ago
        Few as elegant, as safe, or as performant combined...
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Delphi, D, .NET, Eiffel, Ada, Rust, Nim. And lets not put Swift and performance on the same sentence, they still need to catch up a bit. https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy-languages https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy-languages
- MattDamonSpace 7y ago
  Maybe, although they did just hire Dave Abrahams, who was on the Swift Standard Library team for years and seems like an excellent hire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_programmer)#cite_note-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_pro...
- skohan 7y ago
  The Swift core team just added two new members, whose contributions are related to Swift on Windows, and Swift on the server respectively, and have specifically called out supporting Swift in non-Apple domains as a part of the roadmap for Swift 6 (including adding the autodiff work from S4TF into mainline Swift). There is attention being paid to these issues.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Thanks for the heads up, I have been looking at that thread, the roadmap still looks quite uncertain, with big questions regarding what Apple is willing to support outside their platforms, tooling (e.g. IDE support), dependencies to WWDC announcements and deliveries.
    - skohan 7y ago
      I have not tried it myself, but I've heard reports that Swift LSP support is going quite well, and it's possible to develop on Ubuntu using VSCode.
throwaway202021 7y ago
S4TF was started over 2 years ago, and hasn't really gained any ground since then. It's a project on life support and Lattner's departure means the project is going to be put down soon. It's good to try different things; S4TF tried, and failed. No one really cares about it at Google except the team developing it. The researchers are adopting other new technologies, like JAX.
favorited 7y ago
Well they just hired[0] Dave Abrahams[1] last month. Dave is one of the most significant Swift engineers and was on the Swift core team for years. That would be a weird move if they were looking to outright drop it. [0]https://twitter.com/DaveAbrahams/status/1207690883782467584 https://twitter.com/DaveAbrahams/status/1207690883782467584 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_progr...
ardit33 7y ago
Unfortunately Swift is a dud.... and the Apple ecosystem is stuck with it for the next few decades.... I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language. Same with Swift. It is doomed to be an apple ecosystem only type of language. All I wanted is a Python* look alike, with some solid static typing, what we got was a franken/monster/language where people felt to try out their little academic pet-peeves, and sucking out the fun out of programing with it, and making it less accessible to beginners. GO is becoming popular, not because it is shoved down the throat to people, but because its own merit, and mainly because they kept it simple. It is a closely to a "static Python and some minimal features" we got.... *I think Python is a great language, and very accessible for beginners, just not suitable for large projects due to its dynamic type system
- ddragon 7y ago
  Have you checked Nim? It's the closest thing to static Python that I know of (plus some extras like Lisp inspired macros), and there is some early development of a machine learning ecosystem (outside of wrappers): https://nim-lang.org/ https://nim-lang.org/ https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Unfortunately Swift is a dud.... Because of some technical argument, or just personal aesthetics? >I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language. While Objective-C was really cool, it was neither modern enough, and few people liked it (mostly old NeXT/early OS X guys, but not most of the iOS crowds). And Swift is easy to use and nothing like Scala in academic-ness and complexity. >All I wanted is a Python look alike, with some solid static typing* That's not what the ecosystem needed, or what people in general want (there's Go for that, for one). Swift is somewhere between Rust and Kotlin, features wise.
- cwbrandsma 7y ago
  I write iOS apps for a living. Most the people I know have moved away from ObjectiveC. When I see language boards, and jobs for iOS, I see Swift asked for over ObjectiveC. On Reddit, Swift has more subscribers than ObjectiveC, most of the tech articules I see these days are ObjectiveC, when I watch a video on WWDC I often see Swift first. Swift may not be what you wanted, but it is a long way from being a dud. Swift didn't have to be great, it just had to be better than ObjectiveC.
chrislattner 7y ago
Google is pretty committed to it, don't take my word for it, take Jeff Dean's: https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1222033368700706816 https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1222033368700706816

It will most likely fade away. Swift for Tensorflow could never be taken seriously outside Apple community. On Linux, Foundation barely works and one still needs to selectively do either import Darwin or import Glibc for basic IO stuff. Then we are already at Swift 5.1, and Windows version has to be built from source will lots of caveats. How can it even be taken seriously against Julia, Tensorflow for C++, ML.NET all of which work across macOS, Linux and Windows as of today, and offer the same strong typing benefits?

throwlaplace 7y ago
sadly i agree with you. initially i was really excited about S4TF because swift is a fantastic language and it would be a fantastic replacement for python as the defacto ML language. but then i realized tensorflow is much worse than pytorch and the S4TF team was too small to build anything substantive enough to win market share.
flipgimble 7y ago
While I agree there is an even chance that Google will allow S4TF to fade away after Lattner's departure, that is more of a reflection on the company having no commitment or consistency to good ideas: ex: https://gcemetery.co https://gcemetery.co However S4TF should be taken seriously if you understand what they are trying to accomplish and how deeply they designed machine learning support into the language. Take a look at http://fast.ai http://fast.ai new course offerings using S4TF. Swift has always been a long bet. If it doesn't work as you want it, is still short sighted to discount it in the future. also: https://twitter.com/JokerEph/status/1221831507351748608 https://twitter.com/JokerEph/status/1221831507351748608
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I will count on it, when it isn't used to sell Google VMs and works on my machine as easy as Julia and ML.NET work today. I wasn't even aware of http://fast.ai's http://fast.ai's existence.
- nl 7y ago
  With all due reference to Jeremy and Fast.AI (which I love and continue to recommend) I think it's fair to say they don't stick with things for a long time. I think the Fast.AI python library has been re-written 3 times in the past 3 years (Keras -> PyTorch -> PyTorch, differently).
nestorD 7y ago
I love the idea of Swift for Tensorflow : powerful automatic differentiation and a solid type system in a single language. That's something that is not seen elsewhere and that would make it a perfect fit to write deep learning code targeting production systems. Now the language needs two things in order to be safe from an hypothetical abandon from Google : - running smoothly on linux (I though it was already there but your post seem to imply that it is not the case) - getting the auto-diff out of the alpha stage where people can build framework on top of it (fastai seem to be ready to jump on that ball which is nice)
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Here, https://swift.org/getting-started/#using-the-repl https://swift.org/getting-started/#using-the-repl > On macOS 1> import Darwin 2> arc4random_uniform(10) $R0: UInt32 = 4 > On Linux 1> import Glibc 2> random() % 10 $R0: Int32 = 4 Any of the languages that Swift is competing against, doesn't need to have OS specific imports for basic stuff.
  - zer0zzz 7y ago
    Dude you’re literally illustrating Swifts strength here. The whole point is to have a safe easy to use language that reuses existing system libraries.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Any mainstream programming language can do that.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Few as elegant, as safe, or as performant combined...
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Delphi, D, .NET, Eiffel, Ada, Rust, Nim. And lets not put Swift and performance on the same sentence, they still need to catch up a bit. https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy-languages https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy-languages
MattDamonSpace 7y ago
Maybe, although they did just hire Dave Abrahams, who was on the Swift Standard Library team for years and seems like an excellent hire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_programmer)#cite_note-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_pro...
skohan 7y ago
The Swift core team just added two new members, whose contributions are related to Swift on Windows, and Swift on the server respectively, and have specifically called out supporting Swift in non-Apple domains as a part of the roadmap for Swift 6 (including adding the autodiff work from S4TF into mainline Swift). There is attention being paid to these issues.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, I have been looking at that thread, the roadmap still looks quite uncertain, with big questions regarding what Apple is willing to support outside their platforms, tooling (e.g. IDE support), dependencies to WWDC announcements and deliveries.
  - skohan 7y ago
    I have not tried it myself, but I've heard reports that Swift LSP support is going quite well, and it's possible to develop on Ubuntu using VSCode.

throwaway202021 7y ago

S4TF was started over 2 years ago, and hasn't really gained any ground since then. It's a project on life support and Lattner's departure means the project is going to be put down soon. It's good to try different things; S4TF tried, and failed. No one really cares about it at Google except the team developing it. The researchers are adopting other new technologies, like JAX.

favorited 7y ago

Well they just hired[0] Dave Abrahams[1] last month. Dave is one of the most significant Swift engineers and was on the Swift core team for years. That would be a weird move if they were looking to outright drop it. [0]https://twitter.com/DaveAbrahams/status/1207690883782467584 https://twitter.com/DaveAbrahams/status/1207690883782467584 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abrahams_(computer_progr...

ardit33 7y ago

Unfortunately Swift is a dud.... and the Apple ecosystem is stuck with it for the next few decades.... I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language. Same with Swift. It is doomed to be an apple ecosystem only type of language. All I wanted is a Python* look alike, with some solid static typing, what we got was a franken/monster/language where people felt to try out their little academic pet-peeves, and sucking out the fun out of programing with it, and making it less accessible to beginners. GO is becoming popular, not because it is shoved down the throat to people, but because its own merit, and mainly because they kept it simple. It is a closely to a "static Python and some minimal features" we got.... *I think Python is a great language, and very accessible for beginners, just not suitable for large projects due to its dynamic type system

ddragon 7y ago
Have you checked Nim? It's the closest thing to static Python that I know of (plus some extras like Lisp inspired macros), and there is some early development of a machine learning ecosystem (outside of wrappers): https://nim-lang.org/ https://nim-lang.org/ https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer
coldtea 7y ago
>Unfortunately Swift is a dud.... Because of some technical argument, or just personal aesthetics? >I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language. While Objective-C was really cool, it was neither modern enough, and few people liked it (mostly old NeXT/early OS X guys, but not most of the iOS crowds). And Swift is easy to use and nothing like Scala in academic-ness and complexity. >All I wanted is a Python look alike, with some solid static typing* That's not what the ecosystem needed, or what people in general want (there's Go for that, for one). Swift is somewhere between Rust and Kotlin, features wise.
cwbrandsma 7y ago
I write iOS apps for a living. Most the people I know have moved away from ObjectiveC. When I see language boards, and jobs for iOS, I see Swift asked for over ObjectiveC. On Reddit, Swift has more subscribers than ObjectiveC, most of the tech articules I see these days are ObjectiveC, when I watch a video on WWDC I often see Swift first. Swift may not be what you wanted, but it is a long way from being a dud. Swift didn't have to be great, it just had to be better than ObjectiveC.

chrislattner 7y ago

Google is pretty committed to it, don't take my word for it, take Jeff Dean's: https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1222033368700706816 https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1222033368700706816