API design via lexical and dynamic scoping

PyTorch Developer Podcast

Lexical and dynamic scoping are useful tools to reason about various API design choices in PyTorch, related to context managers, global flags, dynamic dispatch, and how to deal with BC-breaking changes. I'll walk through three case studies, one from Python itself (changing the meaning of division to true division), and two from PyTorch (device context managers, and torch function for factory functions).

Further reading.

• Me unsuccessfully asking around if there was a way to simulate __future__ in libraries https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66927362/way-to-opt-into-bc-breaking-changes-on-methods-within-a-single-module
• A very old issue asking for a way to change the default GPU device https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/260 and a global GPU flag https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/7535
• A more modern issue based off the lexical module idea https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/27878
• Array module NEP https://numpy.org/neps/nep-0037-array-module.html