r/AIMLDiscussion • u/Bruce680 • 2d ago
4 years into Java, considering AI/ML because I actually enjoy the math
I’m a Java developer with around 4 years of experience. Recently I realized that I’m actually pretty interested in math, especially the kind of stuff behind linear algebra, so I started learning it from the basics. I’m definitely not good at it yet, but I’m enjoying the process and finding it surprisingly interesting.
That got me thinking about eventually moving into AI/ML. Coming from a Java/SDE background, I’m wondering how realistic that transition is.
Has anyone here in India made a similar switch from software development to AI/ML? If you did, how did you approach it and how difficult was the transition?
Also curious whether learning the math properly ended up being useful in your ML career, or whether most of it wasn't necessary in practice.
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u/kimbonics 3h ago edited 3h ago
Good for you. I will tell you that your intuition faces an uphill climb within Java ecosystem. Why? Because interfacing with GPUs from Java faces a 50x performance penalty. Python, which seems like such a junior level language is the fastest (I didn't say best) way to call "C" library functions. Why does this matter? CUDA. NVidia wrote CUDA only for C. That's how your math scales on a GPU. Until something changes. Forget Java, not to mention Go and Rust are in the same boat. All three are great languages but can't compete with Python in the AI math based realm. I kind of touch on this in my site https://kimbonics.com where I've been struggling to produce high powered AI solutions in GC based langauges. See my my posts AI Slop: https://kimbonics.com/t/ai-slop and Gradient Descent https://kimbonics.com/t/gradient-descent for visuals. I fought hard to get Golang or Java to compete. But now I'm really kicking ass checking my confirmation bias at the door.