An Engineer's musings
Languages, tooling, and how things work under the hood — with the occasional tangent. Kotlin and the JVM show up often, but each post is really just a careful look at an idea worth understanding.
- 4
- tracks
- 14
- series
- 194
- posts
Pick a path
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JVM & Backend
112 postsKotlin, Ktor, Guice, and Misk — for engineers building backends on the JVM.
- Kotlin for Java Engineers
- Kotlin Workbooks
- Building APIs with Ktor
- Guice for JVM Engineers · I
- Guice for JVM Engineers · II
- Building Production Services with Misk
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AI & ML
18 postsA math-light path into running and fine-tuning real AI models — for engineers, not researchers.
- Practical PyTorch · I
- Practical PyTorch · II
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Python for Kids
62 postsA five-phase summer of coding for middle-schoolers — from turtle drawings to a taste of AI.
- Python for Kids · Phase I
- Python for Kids · Phase II
- Python for Kids · Phase III
- Python for Kids · Phase IV
- Python for Kids · Phase V
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macOS
2 postsNotes and fixes from keeping an Intel Mac healthy.
- macOS
Browse the series
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Python for KidsPython for Kids · Phase V
A Taste of AI — use, teach, and train machine-learning models in Colab.
12 posts -
Python for KidsPython for Kids · Phase III
Code Your Own Games — build real arcade games in the browser with pygame, no install.
12 posts -
AI & MLPractical PyTorch · II
Understanding & fine-tuning — how models learn, and adapting a pretrained model to your own data, still without the heavy math.
9 posts -
Python for KidsPython for Kids · Phase IV
Data Detective — load and chart real data in Google Colab with pandas and matplotlib.
12 posts -
JVM & BackendBuilding Production Services with Misk
A source-verified, production-first guide to Cash App's open-source Kotlin microservice container.
25 posts -
JVM & BackendBuilding APIs with Ktor
Build real-world backends and APIs in Kotlin with Ktor — from your first route to production.
17 posts -
JVM & BackendKotlin Workbooks
Short coding exercises to practice the concepts from each Kotlin lesson.
27 posts -
JVM & BackendKotlin for Java Engineers
A ground-up tour of Kotlin for developers coming from Java.
27 posts -
AI & MLPractical PyTorch · I
A gentle, math-free path to running real AI models in Colab — for engineers (and technical PMs), not ML researchers.
9 posts -
Python for KidsPython for Kids · Phase II
Words, logic, and data: programs that talk back.
13 posts -
Python for KidsPython for Kids · Phase I
Summer coding for middle-schoolers — draw with Python and the turtle, right in the browser.
13 posts -
JVM & BackendGuice for JVM Engineers · II
Advanced Guice: multibindings, generics, assisted injection, AOP, private modules, custom scopes, the servlet extension, and testing.
8 posts -
JVM & BackendGuice for JVM Engineers · I
Dependency injection with Guice from the ground up — fundamentals, in Kotlin and Java.
8 posts -
macOSmacOS
Notes and fixes from keeping an Intel Mac healthy.
2 posts
Latest posts
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Capstone: Teach the Computer (and Use AI Wisely) The grand finale. Train your own model end to end, present how well it works, and have the most important conversation in AI: how to use it responsibly. -
Test It, See the Mistakes, Make It Better A great score isn't the end. Look at the actual digits your AI got wrong, understand why, and try simple changes to push the accuracy higher. -
Train an Image Recognizer Teach a model to read handwritten digits. Same recipe as the penguins — but now the features are pixels, and your AI learns to recognize images. -
Pictures Are Just Numbers How can a computer 'see' an image? It can't — but it can read numbers. Discover that every picture is really a grid of brightness values, setting up image AI. -
Project: Build a Guesser Put the whole machine-learning recipe together — load data, split it, train a model, check its accuracy, and make predictions on your own examples.