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

pytorch-probot

The PyTorch Developer Podcast is a place for the PyTorch dev team to do bite sized (10-20 min) topics about all sorts of internal development topics in PyTorch.