renaming step functions to iteration or update functions?

[SamuelBrand1]

Minor issue, but I think us using step functions as terminology for the iteration/update steps in accumulate_scan is possibly a bit confusing? Because "step function" is a pretty well known maths concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_function), and we are using it in a different context e.g. "step-by-step".

This might just be reflecting my personal biases!

[SamuelBrand1]

e.g. AbstractAccumulationStep -> AbstractAccumulationUpdate

[seabbs]

good point. Would your suggestion be iterator or updator or other?

[SamuelBrand1]

My suggestion would be update or updater because iterator is a bit overloaded in Julia.

[seabbs]

so I don't think we should use update as we are likely to want a function called update to i.e update turing models (and in my head update means update an existing object). I don't love that it doesn't clearly identify the iterative process. Hmm

[SamuelBrand1]

Some thing with recurrence or recurrent or an abbreviation?

[seabbs]

hmm maybe

[SamuelBrand1]

Its the same operation as a recurrent NN (just with a dot product rather than a NN call)... so at least some people would find it intuitive description.

[seabbs]

good point

[SamuelBrand1]

Have we in fact just settled on Steps?

[seabbs]

I think we have more paused thinking about it until we have a better vision for a more generic composable iterator vision