// μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math

About the Vetta project’s gradual discovery of matrix-oriented programming:

I got used to coding like this on a summer course (way beyond my actual understanding level) on numeric methods for partial differential equations. We used Matlab back then. Then, in the next trimester, I took a neural networks course. The actual course assignments didn’t require much coding, but I spent at least a week writing a somewhat generalized backpropagation learning algorithm in terms of matrices. The code is unreadable now, if not followed with its (long lost now) paper documentation, which consisted of some scrabbling and hollow matrix shapes. Now, I find matrix-oriented programming fascinating and (I was told in my summer course) it’s great for automatic parallelization but it’s somewhat of an anti-pattern for most purposes (like financial code, for example). It also may lead you (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-wise) to phrasing problems in inappropriate terms. The whole of economics spent the 20th century mis-describing the functioning of a modern economy in matrix form, and I’m not just referring to input-output analysis, but to the greater program of neo-walrasian/debrevian program of general equilibrium.

I was such a dayvan cowboy that I spent many a night rewriting code instead of learning how to use neural net software. Boy, do I miss programming. I feel like I’ve lost some intellectual edge by fitting into the “stable mood” box. Talk about the temptation of dropping the meds.

On A new library allows readers to borrow people for a 30-minute chat. Here’s the experience of one man who offered himself as a human book