Fastai dev study group at USF

Edit: this study group is no longer meeting

We’ll be working out of room 157 at USF pretty much every day (except for 8/14 and 8/27, on those days we’ll be in room 154, and the building will be closed on 9/3 for Labor Day) to develop the new fastai v1 library. If you’re interested in joining in to help, feel free to drop by. Note that this isn’t “office hours” or a general study group - it’s specifically for contributing to the fastai rewrite. Details on who this might be suited to are in the link above. Let me know if you have any questions not covered in the link.

(You are of course welcome to contribute to fastai v1 development remotely!)

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I’ve been hanging out in 157 with @asparagui the past week. Super cool to see something being written from the ground up. Also getting a sneak preview of what’s to come!

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I have learned a ton just from watching @jeremy at work. Likewise, @ashaw is being far, far too modest about his own skills. The more the merrier, if you can drop by you definitely should!

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Are you going to record this? That would be really cool.

Six hours of Jeremy hacking away on a keyboard for a couple of days might be too much even for the most hardcore of students :wink:

At the same time, the notebooks showing the thought process are really, really, really neat. Might be worth taking a look at (there are already 3 very interesting notebooks in the repo). This is probably a more condensed way for us to keep up with the project (than a video recording would be) and seem to be a great learning material for anyone who knows a bit of pytorch and is familiar with the abstractions we used in the course.

Looking very much forward to following along :slight_smile:

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@jeremy I think the following statement is copied from the existing style guide. If you are planning to re-write everything, it is high time to change to “indent with 2 spaces”.

Yeah, i know, but it changes rapidly, every day they refactor the code. So, my point is that it would be nice to see the whole process, meaning how and why certain decisions were made during development, i think many people can learn a lot from that. Anyways, big thanks even for notebooks.

Ok - apologies for my comment, I see your point. All I wanted to say is that I feel the notebooks are of great value :slight_smile: To my mind probably beyond what a recording could add especially the overhead it would create for Jeremy. Anyhow, apologies and I see your point!

Just wanted to say that I am super excited that this is happening and really appreciate that remote folks can also participate.

Sure, no problem. I am also very excited about this.

That’s a good idea. Not sure whether I’ll do it or not… I realized another benefit of 4 spaces is that most people’s text editors are probably already set to do this.

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I’m thinking that part 2 of the new course will be heavily about this process. That’s why I’m building these notebooks as I go. Also, feel free to get involved in the process - you can follow the commits and see what’s happening, and you’re welcome to ask questions in #fastai-dev or make suggestions. I don’t promise I’ll answer, but even if I don’t there might be other people following along that can help.

Recording the actual coding time wouldn’t be much help - I don’t explain what I’m doing, and most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing anyway, and I’m just sitting there thinking or pressing random buttons…

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Oh, I see. I just thought that you are explaining the process as you go. Will try to follow along.
Thanks for reply!

Hello!

Is Fastai dev study group still active? I’m interested in contributing and come in for discussions… Please let me know…

/amit

I have the same question as Amit. I’d like to know if the group is still actively meeting M-F while school is in session. Would also like to know if you need to be a USF student to get into the building. Thanks.

It is not.