# Differentiable programming for gradient-based machine learning

**URL:** <https://forums.swift.org/t/differentiable-programming-for-gradient-based-machine-learning/42147>\
**Category:** Pitches\
**Tags:** numerics, autodiff, machine-learning\
**Created:** [November 19, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://forums.swift.org/t/differentiable-programming-for-gradient-based-machine-learning/42147 "2020-11-19T18:15:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![Anachron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@Anachron](https://forums.swift.org/u/Anachron)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2022, 7:58am UTC](https://forums.swift.org/t/differentiable-programming-for-gradient-based-machine-learning/42147/152 "2022-05-16T07:58:21Z")

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I don’t know if there’s a new thread now, but I just wanted everyone to know what @philipturner already read elsewhere:

There might actually be a way to move forward with ML/DL without a special autodiff toolchain. I‘m not sure about the performance of my more high level solution, but I‘m going to assess that.

> **[GitHub - AnarchoSystems/DeepSwift](https://github.com/AnarchoSystems/DeepSwift)**
>
> Contribute to AnarchoSystems/DeepSwift development by creating an account on GitHub.

Regarding apples to apples comparisons, I would hope that a good library in a good language can identify the hardware it needs and then be written against that hardware. If we’re going to assess the performance of a library, we should be using the hardware that the leaders of the field are using. Haven’t worked with swift outside the apple ecosystem a lot, don’t know how well that works by now, but I think this will be a requirement here.

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**Author:** ![Brad\_Larson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/swift/user_avatar/forums.swift.org/brad_larson/32/16635_2.png) [@Brad\_Larson](https://forums.swift.org/u/Brad_Larson)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2022, 4:54pm UTC](https://forums.swift.org/t/differentiable-programming-for-gradient-based-machine-learning/42147/153 "2022-06-02T16:54:37Z")

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> [@John\_McCall](#):
>
> There probably isn't a whole lot of point to discussing this feature in the abstract right now. Implementation progress and discussion should really go into a dedicated thread in Development, and nothing is happening on the Evolution front.

It's been a little while, but to follow up on John's suggestion I've [created a separate Development thread](https://forums.swift.org/t/ongoing-work-on-differentiable-swift/57780) in an attempt to aggregate information about ongoing implementation work for differentiable Swift. Hopefully that will help to keep the discussions here focused on the pitch itself.

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