What does tensorturtle mean?

I came up with tensorturtle as an online handle around 2020, which is when I got discharged from military service and spent the rest of the COVID year teaching myself Python, then deep learning through Fast.ai (PyTorch).

That year, I truly had deep learning on the brain. I really liked the paradigm shift that the word tensor implied in the context of deep learning. I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of thinking about computation as linear algebraic transforms on information represented as embeddings.

I forgot exactly how turtle came to be, but I do remember that I liked the alliteration (repetition of the ‘t’ sound). It also represents a kind of deliberate wisdom (a la ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ fable) as opposed to frantic carelessness which I felt was a bit of a social norm especially in the software industry where “move fast and break things” was at some point an acceptable motto. I generally enjoy satire.

My hope is that this handle doesn’t become cringe any time soon, especially considering that since 2020, the AI hype has only been blowing up more and more, so the word tensor might become uncool due to overuse. We’ll see.