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Semi-popular where? The typical iOS programmer isn't going to touch ML. In the relevant demography, Julia had (still has) more users. Swift4TF was a poor choice
by yyyk 6y ago
Semi-popular where? The typical iOS programmer isn't going to touch ML. In the relevant demography, Julia had (still has) more users. Swift4TF was a poor choice, and now that Lattner is gone I doubt it has a future.
- marcinzm 6y agoJulia is out because it's not statically typed and not enough of a difference from Python. If it was more popular then it may have had a chance on that alone but it's not. In terms of semi-popular statically typed modern languages that have good/performant C/C++ interop you have: Go, Swift and Rust. Can't think of any others to be honest. I'm guessing Go's lack of generics excluded it and Rust's complexity excluded it.
- yyyk 6y agoTF's own analysis[0] was hesitant on static vs dynamic, finding downsides for either choice and suggested choosing a "middle ground" (which IMHO was doable starting from Julia's optional types). So static typing might be your requirement, but it wasn't TF's requirement. When examining Julia later on, they don't mention dynamic types as a downside at all - and every argument save for "we're familiar with Swift's internal working" was contradicted within the same document... Now, being familiar with Swift is a very understandable reason for their choice, but it's IMHO not the best choice for others which are not as familiar with Swift or ML. Most ML users are very familiar with Python and I think they will find Julia to be a welcome improvement on Python's pain points without Swift's baggage. [0] https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwiftForTensorFlow.md https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwif...