[mlpack] "The future of mlpack", round two!

[Ryan Curtin]

Hello everyone!

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote a document called "The Future of MLPACK":
http://www.ratml.org/misc/mlpack_future.pdf

That document laid out four goals for the development of mlpack:

* Create scalable, fast machine learning algorithms.

* Design an intuitive, simple API for users who are not C++ gurus.

* Implement as large a collection as possible of machine learning
  methods.

* Provide cutting-edge machine learning algorithms that no other
  library does.

In the decade since I wrote that, I think that we have made some
incredible efforts towards those goals.  But now it's 2020, and maybe
it's time to revisit these goals.

In the past ten years the world has changed in ways that I certainly
couldn't have predicted; when I wrote those four goals above, Python was
not even the dominant language for data science!  I think even the term
"data scientist" hadn't even really entered the popular lexicon.

Is anyone here interested in discussing the directions we should take in
the next 3-5 years or so?  If we could make a new design document with
our goals and the things we want to see mlpack solve, this could be
really helpful for new contributors---and for users---to know "what
we're all about" and what we're aimed at.

I've certainly learned a lot in the past ten years about project
planning and setting goals.  So I'd love the chance to help moderate,
guide, and contribute to a discussion like this.  More importantly, I'd
love to see what each of our development interests are, so that maybe we
can all team up on the things we all believe in to make them a reality.
:)

So... to kick it off:

 - What's a goal that you think should be in an mlpack development plan,
   and why?

I opened a Github issue where we can have the discussion:

https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/2524

(If you post a response to the list, I'll probably copy-paste it to
there, so we can keep discussion in one place. :))

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "Bye-bye, goofy woman.  I enjoyed repeatedly
ryan at ratml.org | throwing you to the ground." - Ben Jabituya