Long-form self-study
Learning
Every long-form series on dineshblog. Each one is an evergreen path with individual session pages that route out from a hub post. Pick a path. Bookmark the hub. Work through it at your own pace.
80 sessions~160 hrs
Deep Learning & LLMs From Scratch
Zero DL knowledge on day one → your own instruction-tuned 100M-param model, served behind an HTTPS endpoint.
Modules
- 01Math for DL
- 02Neural nets in NumPy
- 03PyTorch fluency
- 04Regularization + optimization
- 05Convnets + vision
- 06RNNs, embeddings
- 07Transformers from scratch
- 08Tokenization + scaling laws
- 09Pretraining your foundation model
- 10Fine-tuning + alignment (LoRA/QLoRA/DPO)
- 11Efficient inference (quant / vLLM / spec decoding)
- 12Multimodal + agents + RAG + capstone
End state
- Rebuild nanoGPT line by line
- Pretrain a 100M-param LLM for ~$3
- SFT + LoRA/QLoRA fine-tune
- INT4 quantize + serve with vLLM
Audience: You know Python. That's it.
130 sessions~260 hrs
6-Month Engineering Plan
130 atomic sessions across 12 modules — the whole SW→DE→ML→LLM→MLOps stack in one DAG, spiralling.
Modules
- 01Setup & Tools
- 02Python Foundations
- 03Math Foundations
- 04DS & Algos
- 05Databases & SQL
- 06Data Engineering
- 07Backend & APIs
- 08Systems & Infrastructure
- 09Machine Learning
- 10LLMs & Modern AI
- 11MLOps & Production
- 12System Design + Capstone
End state
- Full-stack fluency top to bottom
- Ship 3 capstone projects
- Read prod code without flinching
- Interview-ready for L4/L5 IC roles
Audience: Any engineer who wants breadth + depth.
22 sessions~44 hrs
Microsoft Web Stack — Novice to Fluent
22 chapters: .NET runtime → ASP.NET Core → React/TS → Azure → security → testing → pro skills.
Modules
- 01Developer tooling
- 02Web fundamentals
- 03C# language + .NET runtime
- 04ASP.NET Core
- 05React + TypeScript
- 06Frontend build & state
- 07Auth (Google OAuth PKCE)
- 08Data + EF Core + Postgres
- 09Azure App Service + Front Door
- 10Testing (xunit + Playwright)
- 11Security + observability
- 12Shipping workflow
End state
- Ship a .NET 8 + React app to Azure
- Google OAuth PKCE, from scratch
- Postgres migrations that don't lie
- Front Door + CI/CD wired up
Audience: You know one language. Any language.
How to use this page
- · Pick one series. Don't series-hop — depth beats breadth here.
- · Open the hub post. It has the full session list with click-through.
- · Read one session end to end (~2 hrs) — including the recall questions at the bottom.
- · Come back the next day. Every session ends with a “bring back tomorrow” block for a reason.