That syntax is very clean when it works. I think however the limitation of not being able to pipe arguments into 2nd, 3rd, ..., positions and keyword arguments, or variadic explosion like the syntax showcased in the article makes it less powerful.
Are there other syntax helpers in that language to overcome this?
You can DRS (https://www.dtcc.com/asset-services/securities-processing/di...) your shares so that no one can lend them out from you.
Some brokers have a setting (opt in or opt out) that disallows lending your shares (or that compensate you if they do).
Computing gradients is easy/cheap. What this technique solves is that you no longer need to store the computed values of the gradient until the backpropagation phase, which saves on expensive GPU RAM, allowing you to use commodity hardware.
Are there other syntax helpers in that language to overcome this?