SymForce
Dev tools
symbolic code generation library
SHOW HN2022
How HN took it
6 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 12 comments about the project. Thread score +0.31.
Performance: 0 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Symbolic Python workflow with code generation is useful and exciting
From 3 comments
I think the approach makes a lot of sense. In the past I’ve been using Matlab and Mathematica to solve robotics / trajectories problems symbolically and then generate code from…
crubier on HNFascinating and incredibly exciting -- can't wait to see how the world uses this library
linty_samosa on HNThis is super awesome! Can't wait to see what it enables!
ebaabe on HN
Fast runtime performance for small problems
From 1 comment
Part of the motivation for SymForce was in fact serious attempts (multiple months) by us to do similar things with TensorFlow XLA and being stymied by some of these effects. Many…
haykmartiros on HN
Objections
Benchmarks against TensorFlow and JAX may be unfair, especially batch size choices
From 2 comments
How does it compare with TensorFlow (graph-based, i.e. symbolic) or Theano? Or maybe also JAX, which you could also see as symbolic. In the paper it is briefly mentioned that…
albertzeyer on HN> amortizing across a batch size of 1000 This put the problem outside of L2 and thus is not a fair comparison, especially if your problem is small enough to fit in L1. In…
jxy on HN
No GPU support compared with TensorFlow
From 2 comments
> amortizing across a batch size of 1000 This put the problem outside of L2 and thus is not a fair comparison, especially if your problem is small enough to fit in L1. In…
jxy on HN> TensorFlow code can directly run on GPU. SymForce cannot. I think this is just a matter of tweaking the code generator, and not a hard limitation of Symforce.
crubier on HN
Requests
Fairer benchmarks and direct conceptual comparison with TensorFlow and JAX
From 1 comment
How does it compare with TensorFlow (graph-based, i.e. symbolic) or Theano? Or maybe also JAX, which you could also see as symbolic. In the paper it is briefly mentioned that…
albertzeyer on HN
Questions
How does it compare with CasADi, GTSAM and Ceres
From 2 comments
Super cool! How does this compare with Casadi? I didn't see it mentioned in the related AD frameworks in the paper, but I think that targets a similar niche? Thanks for releasing…
themonteray on HNCongratulations, this looks intriguing! I am somewhat familiar with Ceres and GTSAM. Can you explain how it differs from these? What are the key features of SymForce that make it…
rsp1984 on HN
How does it compare with autodiff in C++ such as Ceres Jet
From 1 comment
How was your experience using this compared with autodiff directly in C++, eg. Jet from Ceres, and depending on the compiler to optimize?
snovv_crash on HN
Alternatives named
CasADi
From 1 comment
Super cool! How does this compare with Casadi? I didn't see it mentioned in the related AD frameworks in the paper, but I think that targets a similar niche? Thanks for releasing…
themonteray on HN
GTSAM
From 1 comment
Congratulations, this looks intriguing! I am somewhat familiar with Ceres and GTSAM. Can you explain how it differs from these? What are the key features of SymForce that make it…
rsp1984 on HN
Ceres
From 1 comment
Congratulations, this looks intriguing! I am somewhat familiar with Ceres and GTSAM. Can you explain how it differs from these? What are the key features of SymForce that make it…
rsp1984 on HN
TensorFlow and JAX
From 1 comment
How does it compare with TensorFlow (graph-based, i.e. symbolic) or Theano? Or maybe also JAX, which you could also see as symbolic. In the paper it is briefly mentioned that…
albertzeyer on HN
Matlab and Mathematica
From 1 comment
I think the approach makes a lot of sense. In the past I’ve been using Matlab and Mathematica to solve robotics / trajectories problems symbolically and then generate code from…
crubier on HN