Why does the basic static, compiled computation graph structure of TF (as opposed to a dynamic graph) necessitate a dedicated while loop node and doesn't enable the use "regular" Python control flow expressions?
Thanks.
TensorFlow builds the computational graph and makes it static (unchangeable) for efficiency. Once it's finalized, telling the TensorFlow graph to do something is like sending some input to a separate program which you can no longer change besides passing in different inputs. So the TensorFlow graph at that point has no knowledge of the Python control flow. It just runs when called. Because of this, it needs to explicitly know ahead of time where you want to add in a while loop inside the TensorFlow graph. You can however, still use Python control flow and just call the TensorFlow graph as though it were a specific function.