A Grand Canyon—like gulf separates experimental machine learning code and production machine learning systems. The scenic view across the “canyon” is magical: when a machine learning system is running successfully in production it can seem prescient. The first time I started typing a query into a machine learning—powered autocomplete search bar and saw the system anticipate my words, I was hooked. I must have tried dozens of different queries to see how well the system worked. So, what does it take to trek across the “canyon?”