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Rule-based NLP that still wins: regex, spaCy Matcher, and hybrid rule+ML pipelines
Large language models have changed what is possible in natural-language processing, but they have not changed a more basic engineering fact: when a text pattern is narrow, stable, and precisely specif
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Business rules engines: Drools, GoRules, and when domain logic must not be learned
Machine learning is excellent when the question is predictive:
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RuleFit and skope-rules: mining crisp rules out of a trained ensemble
Tree ensembles are excellent at discovering nonlinear thresholds and feature interactions. A boosted classifier can learn that a large order is suspicious only when the account is young, or that a dis
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Rule learning: RIPPER, decision lists, and models that output human-readable rules
Most classifiers return a label or probability. A rule learner returns logic that a person can inspect and execute:
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Ship the rule-based baseline first: why 20 lines of if/else gate every good ML project
When people start an ML project, the instinct is often to train a model immediately. Open a notebook, split the data, fit a classifier, and compare metrics.