Topic 2 of 16 in the learning path
Programming & ML Foundations
Python, software engineering, math and classic machine/deep learning basics.
Reels and posts (4)
- Run Notebooks on a Free GPU with Google Colab (T4, 15GB VRAM) · Melvin Vivas, X · 0:17: The post's caption is excited about Claude Opus 5.5 turning the creator's raw clips into shorts.
- 5 Books to Move from Software Engineer to AI/ML Engineer · Bashiri Smith, Facebook · 0:13: A short reel listing five books for software engineers moving into AI/ML engineering.
- Software Engineering Fundamentals Before AI Engineering · Bashiri Smith, Facebook · 0:49: Bashiri Smith says many people struggle to become AI engineers because their software engineering skills are weak.
- Why Coding Fundamentals Still Matter in the AI Era · Melvin Vivas, X: The creator argues that people who learned to code before AI have an advantage.
Watch, free (6)
- Neural Networks: Zero to Hero (Andrej Karpathy) · course · karpathy.ai · free
Build GPT from scratch. The guide calls it the deepest free foundation.
Mentioned in: AI Engineer Roadmap Before 2027: Fundamentals, RAG, Agents, Ops, Evals (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), AI Engineer Roadmap: Fundamentals, RAG, Agents, Books & Your First AI Service (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes)
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - 3Blue1Brown Neural Networks series · video · youtube.com · free
A visual series by 3Blue1Brown explaining neural networks, backpropagation and transformers.
Mentioned in: AI Engineer Roadmap: Fundamentals, RAG, Agents, Books & Your First AI Service (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - fast.ai, Practical Deep Learning for Coders · course · course.fast.ai · free
Build-first deep learning course: you train a model in lesson 1.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - freeCodeCamp · channel · freecodecamp.org · free
Nonprofit that publishes free, full-length programming and AI courses.
Mentioned in: 6 Free Videos to Move from Software Engineer to AI Engineer (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - Google Machine Learning Crash Course · course · developers.google.com · free
About 15 hours, free, no signup. Its Fairness module is recommended as one of the best intros to bias in ML.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - Kaggle Learn · course · kaggle.com · free
Free micro-courses with certificates.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook
Read and use (37)
- Google Colab · tool · colab.research.google.com · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
Free GPU notebooks.
Mentioned in: Run Notebooks on a Free GPU with Google Colab (T4, 15GB VRAM) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Run Local Models on a Free GPU with Google Colab (T4) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Free Colab Notebooks for Local Model Fine-Tuning and Inference (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Intent classification for support using GLiNER2.5-Decide notebook (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 13 more
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - PyTorch · tool · pytorch.org · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
Deep-learning framework. Its built-in scaled dot-product attention (SDP) was the baseline in this benchmark.
Mentioned in: Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Wannabe vs $200K+ AI Engineer: RAG, Agents, Context and Fine-Tuning Mistakes (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), AI DevBox v1.3.0: a GPU-ready Docker image with coding-agent CLIs (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Docker image with coding agents pre-installed on a CUDA + PyTorch base (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 6 more - SQLite · tool · sqlite.org · free
A lightweight embedded SQL database stored in a file.
Mentioned in: Why Plan Mode Still Matters in AI Coding Agents (Codex, Claude, Cursor) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Running Qwen3.8-27B EXL3 Locally on an RTX 3090 with 220K+ Context (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), One-Shotting a Slack Clone with Fable 5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Google Antigravity 2.0: Multi-Agent Desktop App Walkthrough (Subagents, Scheduled Tasks) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 1 more - CUDA · tool · developer.nvidia.com · free
NVIDIA's GPU computing platform, needed for GPU-accelerated deep learning.
Mentioned in: AI DevBox v1.3.0: a GPU-ready Docker image with coding-agent CLIs (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), GPU-Ready AI Devbox Docker Image on Runpod (PyTorch 2.8 + CUDA 12.8) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Reusable GPU devbox: PyTorch/CUDA plus six coding agents (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Jensen Huang on NVIDIA's Long-Term Commitment to Open Nemotron Models (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - DeepLearning.AI · website · deeplearning.ai · free
The gold-standard ML fundamentals course; you can audit it for free.
Mentioned in: How to Relearn LLMs & RAG in 2026: A 7-Step Roadmap with Free Resources (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Software Engineer to AI Engineer: Job Boards, Stack, Projects and Learning Sites (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), 90-Day Plan to Land an AI Engineering Job: Benchmark, Learn, Build (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes)
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - Jupyter Notebook · tool · jupyter.org · free
An interactive notebook format (.ipynb) that mixes code and output. Colab can open these files.
Mentioned in: AI DevBox v1.3.0: a GPU-ready Docker image with coding-agent CLIs (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Run Local Models on a Free GPU with Google Colab (T4) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Q&A Over Your Own PDFs with LlamaIndex, OpenAI and Python (2023) (Melvin Vivas on melvinvivas.com · notes) - Next.js · tool · nextjs.org · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
Open-source React framework for building full-stack web apps.
Mentioned in: Problem Solving Over Keywords: The AI Skill That Never Expires (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Is Indie Hacking Dead? How AI Coding Changes the Micro-SaaS Playbook (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Building and Deploying a Full App with the Codex App, MCP Servers and Skills (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Python · tool · python.org · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
A programming language that comes preinstalled on Droplets created by the plugin.
Mentioned in: Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Software Engineer to AI Engineer: Job Boards, Stack, Projects and Learning Sites (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Run Codex in the Cloud: Spin Up DigitalOcean Droplets with the Codex Plugin (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Deep Learning · book · deeplearningbook.org · free
Strengthens your conceptual understanding as an AI engineer, and is essential for an ML engineer who wants to go far.
Mentioned in: 5 Books to Move from Software Engineer to AI/ML Engineer (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes)
In a shared PDF: 5 books to upgrade from software engineer into Ai/ML engineer - shared in this reel on Facebook - Electron · tool · electronjs.org · free
Framework for building cross-platform desktop apps with web technologies.
Mentioned in: Coworker: An Open-Source Desktop Agent App for Local and Cloud Models (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), One-Shotting a Slack Clone with Fable 5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Git · tool · git-scm.com · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
Version control system. Conductor uses its worktree feature to give each agent an isolated copy of the repo.
Mentioned in: AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 in 60 Seconds (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Conductor Walkthrough: Running Parallel Coding Agents in Isolated Git Worktrees (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Node.js · tool · nodejs.org · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
A JavaScript runtime that comes preinstalled on Droplets created by the plugin.
Mentioned in: Problem Solving Over Keywords: The AI Skill That Never Expires (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Run Codex in the Cloud: Spin Up DigitalOcean Droplets with the Codex Plugin (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - scikit-learn · tool · scikit-learn.org · free
A Python machine learning library for building pipelines and training classic ML models.
Mentioned in: Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Five Core AI Engineering Topic Areas: A Study Roadmap Checklist (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - yfinance · repo · github.com · free
Open-source Python library for downloading Yahoo Finance market data.
Mentioned in: Qwen 3.5 One-Shots a Python Stock Analyzer App with yfinance (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Prompting Qwen 3.5 to Build a yfinance Stock Analyzer (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - DataTalksClub · community · datatalks.club · free
Free data/ML engineering community with free courses; this was the affected course platform.
Mentioned in: Cautionary Tale: Claude Code Wiped a Production Database via Terraform (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Effect · tool · effect.website · free
Open-source TypeScript library for building robust, type-safe applications.
Mentioned in: Theo's YouTube Packaging Masterclass: Thumbnails, Titles and the Algorithm (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Expo · tool · expo.dev · free
A framework and platform for building React Native apps.
Mentioned in: Livestream: Building a React Native ChatGPT App with Cursor and OpenAI (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Express · tool · expressjs.com · free
A minimal Node.js web framework for building APIs.
Mentioned in: Local Qwen 3.5 Adds an Express API and SQLite to Make an App Full-Stack (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Go (programming language) · tool · go.dev · free
The compiled programming language used to rebuild Pi as a single native binary.
Mentioned in: PiG: The Pi Coding Agent Rebuilt in Go as a Single Native Binary (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and PyTorch · book · homl.info · paid
Aurelien Geron's hands-on ML book; the official site has the notebooks plus free online chapters and appendices.
Mentioned in: 5 Books to Move from Software Engineer to AI/ML Engineer (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and PyTorch (Aurélien Géron) · book · ageron.github.io · check price
Hands-on guide to ML techniques. A basic grasp of them helps AI engineers and is essential for ML engineers. The link only goes to the free Appendix E PDF, not the full book.
In a shared PDF: 5 books to upgrade from software engineer into Ai/ML engineer - shared in this reel on Facebook - JBang · tool · jbang.dev · free
Tool for running Java programs and scripts directly, without a build setup.
Mentioned in: CamelFlow: open-source visual viewer for Apache Camel routes (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Kaggle Notebooks · tool · kaggle.com · free
Free weekly GPU hours for experiments, plus public notebooks to learn from.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - LaTeX · tool · latex-project.org · free
Typesetting system for math notation; the agent added LaTeX equation rendering to Excalidraw.
Mentioned in: Cursor Cloud Agents: Onboarding, Self-Testing on a Remote Desktop, Video Demos (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Mathematics for Machine Learning · book · mml-book.github.io · free
Book by Deisenroth, Faisal and Ong covering the linear algebra, calculus, probability and optimization behind ML.
Mentioned in: 5 Books to Move from Software Engineer to AI/ML Engineer (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - Mathematics for Machine Learning (Deisenroth, Faisal, Ong) · book · mml-book.github.io · free
Math for ML. You don't strictly need it to be an AI engineer, though it is very useful, but you do need math to be an ML engineer.
In a shared PDF: 5 books to upgrade from software engineer into Ai/ML engineer - shared in this reel on Facebook - Papers With Code · website · paperswithcode.com · free
Papers with runnable implementations. Reading the implementation sections of seminal papers shows depth.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - PostgreSQL · tool · postgresql.org · free
Open-source relational database.
Mentioned in: Why Plan Mode Still Matters in AI Coding Agents (Codex, Claude, Cursor) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Prisma · tool · prisma.io · free
TypeScript ORM with a migration tool.
Mentioned in: Don't Let Coding Agents Run Database Migrations Unsupervised (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - React · tool · react.dev · free
JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
Mentioned in: Problem Solving Over Keywords: The AI Skill That Never Expires (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) - React Native · tool · reactnative.dev · free
Meta's open-source framework for building native iOS and Android apps with JavaScript/TypeScript and React.
Mentioned in: Gemma 4 Coming to React Native: On-Device LLMs for Mobile Apps (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Replit · tool · replit.com · free
Browser-based coding for learning Python without any setup.
In a shared PDF: The AI Pivot Field Guide - shared in this reel on Facebook, this reel on Facebook - Supabase · tool · supabase.com · free
Hosted Postgres backend platform.
Mentioned in: Don't Let Coding Agents Run Database Migrations Unsupervised (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Tailwind CSS · tool · tailwindcss.com · free
Utility-first CSS framework.
Mentioned in: One-Shotting a Slack Clone with Fable 5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - Tauri · tool · tauri.app · free
Framework for building desktop apps, which Conductor itself is built with.
Mentioned in: Conductor Walkthrough: Running Parallel Coding Agents in Isolated Git Worktrees (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - TerminalTextEffects · repo · github.com · free
Python library for visual text effects in the terminal; the original that was rewritten.
Mentioned in: AI One-Shot Rust Rewrite of TerminalTextEffects: 43x Faster Startup (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) - TypeScript · tool · typescriptlang.org · free
Typed superset of JavaScript.
Mentioned in: One-Shotting a Slack Clone with Fable 5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes)