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Differentiable Programming from Scratch

(thenumb.at)
108 points sksxihve | 1 comments | 17 Apr 25 04:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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. taeric ◴[17 Apr 25 16:06 UTC] No.43718792[source]▶
Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) were not really a secret. And they often have many many tricks that we are constantly relearning. Some of this relearning, of course, is by design. A lot of what they do are things we teach. How to calculate different functions and such. Repeated squares and such are fun topics.

A lot of the current new set of learning is that we have the compute power to do these things in more places. It is also something that has been long done in expensive environments that many of us just don't have access to.