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by data_maan 1422 days ago
> don't know if you'll read this

I did read it ;) Because I'm very much interested in this entire topic.

> I hope I can encourage you to think more broadly about what "differentiable programming" means

I'm trying to, but I find it hard. My stance was that differentiable programming seemes like this theory for which only a single example (namely autodiff) existed, as you also said ("autodiff has mostly developed in practical usage, so the use cases are front-running the theory"). But this entire comment of yours really clarified some things for me.

> The main paper I linked [2] is not about autodiff at all. >The quote you cite from [3] is easily misunderstood without that context

You finally convinced me to have a detailed look at this. Thank you for providing the context.

> Conditionals and loops are possible in [2] since it allows church numerals and fixed point combinators but it introduces a nondeterministic sum [...] and is difficult to operationalize. That's what I meant by "wildly uncomputable".

I think I may have misunderstood some of your previous comments (and perhaps vice versa) as it now dawns on me that you use a vocabulary than comes (I guess?) from PL theory and is very different from the one I'm used to, as a mathematician versed in analysis. I'll re-read them.

> Daniel Murfet et al [6] have some related work more directly in the context of machine learning.

I'm actually aware of Daniel Murfet but haven't read his work from last years. Did you have a specific paper from him in mind?