Re:PyTorch: Where we are headed and why it looks a lot like ...
by forrestthewoods on Friday November 26, 2021 @07:44PM
(#29355946)
It's true that the tech revolution would not have happened if all code had to be written in assembly. And it's true the machine learning revolution would not have happened if all code had to be written in C.
Is Python better than assembly and C/C++ for ML? Absolutely. Is Python good? I don't think so. Other people might use that term, I do not. I think Python is a bad language that would be designed very differently it was built today. And we're stuck with its decisions because the inertia to change them is monumental.
It's not really the language's fault. As an industry we've learned a lot in the past 30 years! It would be a travesty if we hadn't made language design process! Unfortunately we haven't figured out how to effectively apply lessons to encumbered ecosystems. Case in point: the transition from Python 2 to Python 3 was an absolute disaster. And it only made tiny, incremental improvements!
Is Python better than assembly and C/C++ for ML? Absolutely. Is Python good? I don't think so. Other people might use that term, I do not. I think Python is a bad language that would be designed very differently it was built today. And we're stuck with its decisions because the inertia to change them is monumental.
It's not really the language's fault. As an industry we've learned a lot in the past 30 years! It would be a travesty if we hadn't made language design process! Unfortunately we haven't figured out how to effectively apply lessons to encumbered ecosystems. Case in point: the transition from Python 2 to Python 3 was an absolute disaster. And it only made tiny, incremental improvements!