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I wonder if this will curtail the effort to implement TensorFlow in Swift, turtles all the way down? That would be a shame. Python ecosystem with TensorFlow, P
by mark_l_watson 7y ago
I wonder if this will curtail the effort to implement TensorFlow in Swift, turtles all the way down?
That would be a shame. Python ecosystem with TensorFlow, PyTorch, mxnet, etc. has been good for rapid progress but I think we need something better to break out of just using deep learning. This needs a hackable infrastructure. I personally don't have the skill to hack the C++ TensorFlow core.
I think a new ecosystem based on Swift, TensorFlow, and future tools and platforms makes some good sense.
An alternative would be a similar hackable infrastructure based around the Julia language, which is also very good.
- byt143 7y agoEven in swift it isn't "turtles all the way down". The AD stuff is hardcored into the C++ guts of the compiler, whereas Julia's source to source autodiff accesses a compiler pass from a fully Julia user package. Aside from making it easier to hack and improve the AD system as just a Julia user, this capability enables other package program transforms like that in https://github.com/MikeInnes/Poirot.jl https://github.com/MikeInnes/Poirot.jl for prob programming. So Julia is already further ahead in that regard and it's more hackable.
- mark_l_watson 7y agore: "So Julia is already further ahead in that regard and it's more hackable." I agree. Flux is very concise, very nice to work with. I just had some trouble with my small playing-around code snippets when going from one minor release to the next, but that probably means I should revert to the LTS 1.* version. I have tried Julia with non-mathematical stuff like using it with sqlite, fetching and using RDF data, and general text processing - nice for those use cases also.