Why software engineering processes and tools don’t work for machine learning

Re:Why software engineering processes and tools don’t work f... by barumi on Thursday October 15, 2020 @03:05AM (#24785714)

> If you're iterating on your approach to a model, it really is a drag to do a bunch of bullshit in order to run an experiment that's likely to fail and just be thrown out anyways.

Professional software development has plenty of proofs of concept and "iterating on an approach to a" something. I don't understand what confused state of mind leads anyone to assume that any field of engineering, specially software development, doesn't deal with one off quick and dirty tests.

What really boggles the mind is that any data analyst worth his salt knows very well that he needs to track his inputs to be able to analyse the outputs, thus software development practices are far more forgiving than data analysis ones.

It seems to me that the author just wants to make excuses for shoddy work.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why software engineering processes and tools don’t work f... by hinkley on Thursday October 15, 2020 @01:57PM (#24791586)

Or that any field of engineering doesn't have a long list of things that 'are a drag'. I've had no end of people tell me, when The Drag is getting to me, that this is part of why we are paid so well.

I don't necessarily agree, I think it's more to do with market value of output, but a large number of people feel that way. Where we do always agree is that there are Things Which Must Be Done, even when you don't wanna.

[ Parent | on HN ]