Top all-time · #20952
Backprop
Company blog · trybackprop.com/blog · on HN as trybackpropaiprogrammingmath
Backprop is the company blog at trybackprop.com, writing about ai, programming and math. Since 2024, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “Free ML Resources to Become a FAANG ML Engineer”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Backprop's blog for its survey of free machine learning learning resources and courses. Commenters point to it as a companion to other ML courses.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Learn about AI/ML. Career, algorithms, you name it
Most-linked posts?
- Free ML Resources to Become a FAANG ML Engineer3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-12
What Hacker News says?
This is a great survey. Combine it with the courses below for best results: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/top_ml_learning_resources
Comment linking /blog/top_ml_learning_resources
on “AI Engineer Reading List”Submitted Linear Algebra 101 for AI/ML as a story · 79 points
HN discussionA blog for learning all things ML – concepts, interview tips, online ML courses: https://www.trybackprop.com
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)”Submitted Linear Algebra 101 for AI/ML – Dot Product, Embeddings as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI made a list of all the free resources I used to study ML and deep learning to become an ML engineer at FAANG, so I think it'll be helpful to follow these resources: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/top_ml_learning_resources (links in the blog post) Fundamentals Linear Algebra – 3Blue1Brown's Essence of Linear Algebra series, binged all these videos on a one hour train ride visiting my parents Multivariable Calculu…
Comment linking /blog/top_ml_learning_resources
on “The Engineer’s Guide to Deep Learning: Understanding the Transformer Model”Submitted Show HN: I created two interactive web experiences to learn ML as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI recommend checking out this survey of free ML resources: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/top_ml_learning_resources No doubt CMU's intro to deep learning course is good, you might find some other goodies in that link too.
Comment linking /blog/top_ml_learning_resources
on “Introduction to Deep Learning (CMU)”Submitted Build Image Search with Linear Algebra Fundamentals as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI actually wrote a blog post about this for experienced software engineers like you who are thinking of transitioning to ML, so I wanted to share it here: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/2024_06_09_you_dont_need_a_... I write about various engineers who now work at Meta, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI who made the switch. You can see what strategies and tactics they used to do it. 1) It's "wise" if you find during your…
Comment linking /blog/linalg101/part_1_vectors_matrices_operations
on “Ask HN: How to pivot to a Machine Learning engineer?”Submitted Free ML Resources to Become a FAANG ML Engineer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFrom my experience with 5 years in “software engineering” and then 7 years in “machine learning”, what matters is the most is that you like what you do so that you can bring your A game to work. That’ll separate you from the average engineer and management and peers will take notice. Yes it’s very tough to find a job right now, and there will always be down cycles. But I’ve noticed the best engineers are able to sta…
Comment linking /blog/2024_06_09_you_dont_need_a_phd
on “Ask HN: Should I study machine learning or software engineering?”Submitted Linear Algebra for AI/ML Part 2 – Dot Product as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLearn the linear algebra you need to know for AI/ML. This covers the dot product both algorithmically and visually and applies it to machine learning embeddings. This article also contains visualizations and two interactive playgrounds, the Interactive Dot Product Playground [0] and the Interactive Embedding Explorer [1] (best viewed with laptop or desktop!) to reinforce the concepts that are taught. [0] https://www…
Comment linking /blog/linalg101/part_2_dot_product
on “Linear Algebra 101 for AI/ML – Dot Product, Embeddings”