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MILA and the future of Theano

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Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#11

Post by nextos »

pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

I guess this is quite natural. Once some key ideas have been laid out, it's easy for a big corp like Google (whose expertise is on software engineering & algorithms for data processing) to chip in and produce something better.

Research organizations like the University of Montreal cannot compete with that.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#12

Post by aljones »

pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

Chrome's growth was bootstrapped with very pushy ads on the highest traffic website on the internet, that typically doesn't allow ads. They also paid to bundle it with unrelated installers.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#13

Post by alexasmyths »

pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

" by producing a superior and more robust alternative."

In a commodity market - those with brand and distribution will win.

Chrome isn't really that much better than others. It may be in some areas, not in others.

But when the 'company that owns the web' is promoting it, they can get any number of downloads they chose to as long as the product is competitive.

And distribution is one thing, brands have incredible power - even with 'we HN readers' who should kind of know better.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#14

Post by cryptoz »

nextos wrote: post #11
pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

I guess this is quite natural. Once some key ideas have been laid out, it's easy for a big corp like Google (whose expertise is on software engineering & algorithms for data processing) to chip in and produce something better. Research organizations like the University of Montreal cannot compete with that.

> Research organizations like the University of Toronto cannot compete with that.

This is true; note that in this case it is Université de Montréal.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#16

Post by dasternberg »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #10
jsweojtj wrote: post #6

I'm curious what will happen with PyMC... incorporate another library? Is there an easily swappable library that does what Theano does?

Keras is pretty cool and can already use Theano and Tensorflow as a backend.

Not sure how this comment relates to PyMC3 though - PyMC3 is for Bayesian statistical modeling with MCMC. It uses Theano as a backend. Keras is a specifically for neural networks.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#17

Post by lucio »

aljones wrote: post #12
pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

Chrome's growth was bootstrapped with very pushy ads on the highest traffic website on the internet, that typically doesn't allow ads. They also paid to bundle it with unrelated installers.

Chrome also was faster and simpler than the alternatives. That was relevant too. If it was only about Google weight, G+ would be a success.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#18

Post by jostmey »

nohat wrote: post #4

I'm actually nostalgic despite not using Theano for all that long. Theano really was groundbreaking and excellent, though, like many, I've moved on. Thanks to the developers!

EDIT:

Theano inspired TensorFlow, Pytorch, ect ect. That there are so many imitators is a complement to Theano.

Re: MILA and the future of Theano

#20

Post by ethbro »

alexasmyths wrote: post #13
pesenti wrote: post #2

Reminds me of Chrome. Lots of competing alternatives. Google comes late yet still manage to take over the market organically very quickly by producing a superior and more robust alternative.

" by producing a superior and more robust alternative." In a commodity market - those with brand and distribution will win. Chrome isn't really that much better than others. It may be in some areas, not in others. But when the 'company that owns the web' is promoting it, they can get any number of downloads they chose to as long as the product is competitive. And distribution is one thing, brands have incredible powe…

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