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Differentiable Programming from Scratch

(thenumb.at)
108 points sksxihve | 1 comments | 17 Apr 25 04:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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FilosofumRex ◴[17 Apr 25 10:14 UTC] No.43714883[source]▶
Historical fact: Differentiable programming was a little known secret back in the 90's, used mainly by engineers simulating numerically stiff systems like nukes and chemicals in FORTRAN 95. It then disappeared for nearly 30 yrs before rediscovery by the ML/AI researchers!
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1. kxyvr ◴[17 Apr 25 15:18 UTC] No.43718165[source]▶
Automatic differentiation was actively and continuously used in some communities for the last 40 years. Louis Rall has an entire book about it published in 1981. One of the more popular books on AD written by Griewank was published in 2000. I learned about it in university in the early 2000s. I do agree that the technology was not as well used as it should have been until more recently, but the technology was well known within numerical math world and used continuously over the years.