Series·5 parts · ~59 min total

LLMs from the foundations

Start with how neural networks work, then walk through the history of language models, the transformer, and how LLMs became useful and turned into the platform we use today.

01
Neural NetworksMarch 8, 2026Interactive demo
How Neural Networks Work
A somewhat simple and plain english walk-through of neurons, layers, training, and embeddings. The fundamentals you need before any modern AI article makes some sense.
10 min read
02
LLMMarch 12, 2026
LLMs Explained, Part 1: How We Got Here
A simple history of AI from 1950 to 2017, written for software engineers who want to understand where today's LLMs actually came from.
15 min read
03
LLMMarch 16, 2026
LLMs Explained, Part 2: How the Transformer Works
How the 2017 'Attention Is All You Need' paper threw out the RNN, what self-attention actually does, and why this one architecture became the foundation of every LLM today.
14 min read
04
LLMMarch 20, 2026
LLMs Explained, Part 3: How LLMs Got Useful
From GPT-3 to ChatGPT. The story of how scale, instruction tuning, and human feedback turned a text-completion engine into the assistant a hundred million people started using overnight.
10 min read
05
LLMMarch 24, 2026
LLMs Explained, Part 4: The Platform Era
From GPT-4 to today's reasoning models, agents, and coding tools. How LLMs went from a single chatbot to the platform every product is built on.
10 min read

LLMs from the foundations

How Neural Networks Work

LLMs Explained, Part 1: How We Got Here

LLMs Explained, Part 2: How the Transformer Works

LLMs Explained, Part 3: How LLMs Got Useful

LLMs Explained, Part 4: The Platform Era