Stop Training Models in DEV. Train Them in LAB.
<p><strong><em>Congratulations, ML professionals of all kinds!</em></strong> Only 10 years after Andrew Ng taught everyone about gradient descent, our respectable profession has almost entirely moved away from using the <code>PROD</code> environment for everything. Pat yourself on the back.</p>
<p><em>Now shame on you!</em> Because I glanced over your shoulder just now and saw you training a model in <code>DEV</code>. <strong>There’s a better way, people, and it’s called </strong><code><strong>LAB</strong></code><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>So here’s what I want to tell you about:</p>
<ul>
<li>Environments — what they are.</li>
<li>How Machine Learning has two very distinct concepts of a development environment, <code>DEV</code> and <code>LAB</code>, that should not be confused (or share the same name).</li>
<li>How to organize your team’s work between <code>DEV</code> and <code>LAB</code>, and the implications for other environments.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Environments</h1>
<h2>What are Environments?</h2>
<p>Let’s talk for a minute about Environments. First off, let me provide a dense definition of <em>Environment</em> and then unpack it a bit. For the purpose of this blog, an <em>Environment</em> is a runtime that is configured to use a specific group of infrastructure resources for a particular use case. (This definition mashes a few different concepts together, namely <em>runtime</em>, <em>resources</em>, and <em>use case. </em><a href="https://www.tinystacks.com/blog-post/a-guide-to-stacks-and-stages-on-aws/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Here</a> and <a href="https://www.tinystacks.com/blog-post/what-are-stacks-stages-and-environments/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> are some useful blog posts separating those concepts for you.)</p>
<p><a href="https://johndanielraines.medium.com/stop-training-models-in-dev-train-them-in-lab-ad266c6ff3a6"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>