François CholletVerified account

Symbolic APIs are APIs to build graphs of layers. Their strong points are that: - They match how we think about our networks (NNs are always visualized as graphs of layers in textbooks & papers) - They run extensive static checks during model construction, like a compiler would

This gives you the guarantee that any model that you can build, will run. The only form of debugging you'd have to do at runtime would be convergence-related. The UX of these APIs is highly intuitive and productive

Meanwhile, the subclassing API has the look and feel of objected-oriented Numpy development. It's ideal if you're doing anything that cannot easily be expressed as a graph of layers, and you feel comfortable with software engineering best practices and large Python projects.

It will involve execution-time debugging, more code, and will expose a greater error surface, but at the same time it will give you greater flexibility to express unconventional architectures.

Importantly, in TF 2.0, both of these styles are available and are fully interoperable. You can mix and match models defined with either style. At the end of the day, everything is a Model! That way, you are free to pick the most appropriate API for the task at hand.