Episode 10
The life and death of Variable
What is a Variable? Why did it exist as a wrapper in the first place? Why did it get removed? How did we remove it? What are some of the lingering consequences of its removal?
May 17, 202115m 29s
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (cdn.simplecast.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
What is a Variable? Why did it exist as a wrapper in the first place? Why did it get removed? How did we remove it? What are some of the lingering consequences of its removal?
Further reading:
- The release notes of PyTorch 0.4 do a good job explaining the user visible consequences of the removal, at the time, including how we "simulate" concepts on Variable that don't make sense anymore https://pytorch.org/blog/pytorch-0_4_0-migration-guide/
- Part 1: Removal of Variable wrapper in C++ https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/17072
- Part 2: Merge of Variable and Tensor types in C++ https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/28620