title: Are Tensorflow Variables essential?
body: <p>I pretty much understand the concept of Variable in Tensorflow (I think) but I still haven't found them very useful. The main reason I read it is interesting to use them it's to later restore them, which might be handy in some cases, but you could achieve similar results using numpy.save for saving matrices and values, or even writing them out in a log file.</p>
  
  <p>Variables are used to save Tensors but you can use a Python variable to save them, avoiding the Tensorflow's Variable extra wrapper.</p>
  
  <p>Variables become nice when used using get_variable function since the code will be much cleaner than using dictionary to store weights, however, in terms of functionality, I don't get why are they important.</p>
  
  <p>My conclusion about TF Variables is that they help us to write nicer code but they are not essential. Any thoughts about them?</p>