[aibottle]

People complaining about having to implement backprop in a ML class? Nice one. Had to hand in this exact assignment last Friday. A valuable lesson, that's for sure. Generally I love how a proper lesson on Machine Learning really contradicts the "universal power weapon" narrative media put on machine learning in the last few years. Everything is not so magic anymore when it boils down to proper algorithm use.

[vertex-four]

> People complaining about having to implement backprop in a ML class?

Wouldn't that suggest that other classes the students take have not been academic enough - i.e. that they focus too much on "things you might use day-to-day" vs "this is how/why things work"?

[tnecniv]

This attitude is not uncommon in programming / CS. It's similar to those who pine about learning a half dozen search algorithms when they rarely need to implement them in practice.

[jlg23]

Hear, hear. Indeed, "welcome" to everybody who takes the time to understand what (s)he is talking about.

[esalman]

Agreed. The most important lesson I took away from my ML class is that I have to learn more of optimization theory.