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Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

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Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#41

Post by wokwokwok »

jstx1 wrote: post #29

It's cool that this is coming from huggingface and it isn't just someone's hobby project. Rust is in a weird place where people are trying to push it in a bunch of places where it doesn't belong naturally (web dev, data science) but then when you complain that it's difficult to use you get told that you're using the wrong language for your use case... I really want to like Rust - I've read the Rust book, done the Rus…

Yeah, but the goal of this isn’t “use this instead of Python to hack up a model”

…it’s:

> And simply removing Python from production workloads. Python can really add overhead in more complex workflows and the GIL is a notorious source of headaches.

You know, those hugging face guys kindaaaaa do know what they’re talking about.

Like, really.

Python is a pain in the ass in production environments.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#42

Post by unshavedyak »

jstx1 wrote: post #29

It's cool that this is coming from huggingface and it isn't just someone's hobby project. Rust is in a weird place where people are trying to push it in a bunch of places where it doesn't belong naturally (web dev, data science) but then when you complain that it's difficult to use you get told that you're using the wrong language for your use case... I really want to like Rust - I've read the Rust book, done the Rus…

It may just be for different people, not sure. I'm a Rust fanatic, i use it for everything, including web dev. We even have a shop full of similar Rust folks.

Personally it's my most productive language, and this is after years in Python, NodeJS, and ~5 years Go.

Which isn't to attempt to invalidate your experience. But i do think:

> writing Rust is a slog where you have to jump through hoops and spend a lot more time thinking about programming language abstractions than thinking about the problem you're solving.

Is quite a leap. A language you describe not speaking natively is, unsurprisingly, difficult for you. Which is a far cry to say it's always that way.

You of course shouldn't be in a rush to rewrite anything unless you see the value in it. I make no claims of that value, either. Rewrite It In Rust (RIIR) is a meme, imo a destructive meme. But i do take issue with labeling any language broadly.

Most languages are pretty good when you're very fluent in them, and while they do have tradeoffs, i don't think Rust's tradeoffs are as you put them.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#44

Post by brrrrrm »

codeflo wrote: post #36
brrrrrm wrote: post #22

I've come to the personal conclusion that the issue with compiled languages and machine learning is that the API surface is so big and the operations themselves are very self-contained. I find that I am not typically writing complex "language-level" logic that would be expressible in any type of language and would benefit from the performance of compilation. I am guessing APIs and quickly testing ideas in totally unr…

I wonder about this. Is ML just plugging together prebuilt blocks because that covers the entire solution space, or are we limiting the solution space to that because that’s the only thing you can realistically do in Python?

It's worth noting that these pre-built blocks are both convenient and incredibly flexible. Before I started getting my hands dirty, it was hard to really see this. For example, here's a masked gather operation along the innermost dimension of an arbitrary rank tensor A:

    A[..., idx[mask]]
I'd hate to have to express that in serial code and then pray a compiler could lift the correct vectorized version out of it.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#45

Post by ElectricalUnion »

codeflo wrote: post #36
brrrrrm wrote: post #22

I've come to the personal conclusion that the issue with compiled languages and machine learning is that the API surface is so big and the operations themselves are very self-contained. I find that I am not typically writing complex "language-level" logic that would be expressible in any type of language and would benefit from the performance of compilation. I am guessing APIs and quickly testing ideas in totally unr…

I wonder about this. Is ML just plugging together prebuilt blocks because that covers the entire solution space, or are we limiting the solution space to that because that’s the only thing you can realistically do in Python?

You're limiting your solution space because it's the only thing exposed to you in Python.

You're not really doing "ML in Python", you're doing ML with those bunch of libraries that happens to expose limited bindings in Python.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#46

Post by synergy20 »

jstx1 wrote: post #29

It's cool that this is coming from huggingface and it isn't just someone's hobby project. Rust is in a weird place where people are trying to push it in a bunch of places where it doesn't belong naturally (web dev, data science) but then when you complain that it's difficult to use you get told that you're using the wrong language for your use case... I really want to like Rust - I've read the Rust book, done the Rus…

A similar situation here for me. Rust might be a modern Ada for a particular use case(system programming), I was puzzled why stackoverflow ranked it as 'the most loved' language for years. For each language related post at HN, you will always see rust lover's posts there saying "I wish it's in rust", or "there is a rust version", or "rust is even better". The reality does not match up with the enthusiasm for me though, what am I missing?

After each try with Rust, I ended up going back to c++ myself, it's just more productive in practice.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#47

Post by otikik »

CharlesW wrote: post #10
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been wondering what might move data scientists to Rust. I think dynamic typing is the missing piece. Rust's safety guarantees are great and I like the language, but the type system is a barrier for learners, especially people who aren't full-time devs. Ease of experimentation and flexibility are key for this use case.

> Rust's safety guarantees are great and I like the language, but the type system is a barrier for learners, especially people who aren't full-time devs. This surprises me. Hasn't everyone working with data (even at an "enthusiast" level) had to understand data types in the context of databases?

Not with an ownership model and lifetimes. Most of the scientists I know have not even dealt with parametric types.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#48

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

jstx1 wrote: post #29

It's cool that this is coming from huggingface and it isn't just someone's hobby project. Rust is in a weird place where people are trying to push it in a bunch of places where it doesn't belong naturally (web dev, data science) but then when you complain that it's difficult to use you get told that you're using the wrong language for your use case... I really want to like Rust - I've read the Rust book, done the Rus…

Python stands on the shoulders of giants writing C libraries. Those people think a lot of about problems you haven't had to deal with.

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#49

Post by taminka »

lionkor wrote: post #32
jstx1 wrote: post #29

It's cool that this is coming from huggingface and it isn't just someone's hobby project. Rust is in a weird place where people are trying to push it in a bunch of places where it doesn't belong naturally (web dev, data science) but then when you complain that it's difficult to use you get told that you're using the wrong language for your use case... I really want to like Rust - I've read the Rust book, done the Rus…

This has been my experience, too. Somewhere in Rust, there is a beautiful, functional(ish), pragmatic and simple language, hiding in between all the crappy things. So it's just like C++ ;) except it has pattern matching and const by default.

what being a kitchen sink language does to a mf

Re: Candle: Torch Replacement in Rust

#50

Post by GaggiX »

I would love to see a single binary application with bleeding edge neural networks in it without all the complexity and bloat added when using Python in distributed software programs.

I guess you would be able to achieve it even before but this library should help a lot.

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