The spelled-out intro to neural networks and backpropagation: building micrograd

Why HN readers recommended it

HN treats it as the best starting point for really understanding backprop and neural nets, because Karpathy explains the why with intuition and builds everything in code.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Andrej Karpathy

Topic

backpropagation and neural networks

Format

lecture

Level

intro

HN recommenders in dataset

17

HN mentions in dataset

20

Recommendation years in dataset

2022–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• I recommend watching Andrej Karpathy's recent videos on backprop and neural nets. Makes it really simple and intuitive. The spelled-out intro to neural networks and backpropagation: [VIDEO] Becoming a backprop ninja: [LINK]

• For those who dont know, Andrej has a brilliant series of videos on youtube where he explores the basics of neural nets right up to transformer architecture through code. Starts here [0] and most recent is building GPT from scratch in code. [VIDEO]

• The ChatGPT video by Karpathy is the last in a 7 video series. The one that really hit it home for me was the first video on MicroGrad [1]. The second video builds on MicroGrad and is also great for understanding how a basic NN …