AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I created a Neural Network from scratch, in scratch

I spent the past week implementing a 1 Layer Neural Net and training it on MNIST within the visual scripting language provided by scratch.mit.edu. It was tedious, but ultimately not too difficult. The code runs incredibly slowly, so much so that 64 samples of MNIST takes 5+ hours to train on my machine. There were a lot of little mini challenges that were fun to overcome (implementing softmax was very tricky). If you're interested, I encourage you to try and improve on it! More details in the linked blog post.

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I created a Neural Network from scratch, in scratch launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1
100 Vibe Coding▲351
Hi HN, I have been making side projects since I was 14, and my team mate (this is his very first side project! Congrats!) designed and implemented the UI. Over time, people kept asking me how they could start coding and turn ideas into reality. So we had an idea. Coding is changing. With AI, the bottleneck is no longer writing every line by hand but knowing how to prompt effectively to reach a working outcome. Our objective is not to make people code better, or even learn to be a proficient software engineer, but just to keep it simple and start building. We want to remove fear and barriers…
2025 · 100vibecoding.com · its alternatives →
2
Sonnet▲134
A new library for constructing neural networks from DeepMind
2017 · deepmind.google · its alternatives →
3
I'm 15 and built a neural network from scratch in C++,just math▲8
I’m 15 and self-taught. I'm learning ML from scratch because I want to really understand how things work. I’m not into frameworks. I prefer math, logic, and C++. I implemented a basic MLP that supports different activation and loss functions. It was trained via mini-batch gradient descent. I wrote it from scratch, using no external libraries except Eigen (for linear algebra). I learned how a Neural Network learns (all the math) -- how the forward pass works, and how learning via backpropagation works. How to convert all that math into code. I’ll write a blog soon explaining how MLPs work in…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
I wrote my first neural network▲6
I have been interested in neural nets since the 90's. I've done quite a bit of reading, but never gotten around to writing code. I used Gemini in place of Wikipedia to fill in the gaps of my knowledge. The coolest part of this was learning about dual numbers. You can see in early commits that I did not yet know about auto-diff; I was thinking I'd have to integrate a CAS library or something. Now, I'm off to play with TensorFlow.
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
5AV
A Visual and Interactive Guide to the Basics of Neural Networks▲63
Discussions: Hacker News (63 points, 8 comments), Reddit r/programming (312 points, 37 comments) Translations: Arabic, French, Spanish Update: Part 2 is now live: A Visual And Interactive Look at Basic Neural Network Math Motivation I’m not a machine learning expert. I’m a software engineer by train
2016 · jalammar.github.io · its alternatives →
6W1
Watch 14-Byte AI "brains" attempt to solve a 2D maze (Its hard)▲25
Hey HackerNews, I built this project over the last few weeks as a palette cleanser from a failed game launch. I wanted to learn a bit about AI/Neural-Networks and naively thought I could build a tiny maze-solving AI in a weekend with a 100% solve rate. Well - I couldn't, but I got pretty close. 14 Bytes total model size, and a 96.5% solve rate on unseen mazes. Trained across 46 phases experimenting with different ideas to improve the model (better performance, smaller size). Its quite fun to watch the model attempt to solve the maze, when they fail its usually due to getting stuck in a…
Jul 2026 · con-dog.github.io · its alternatives →
7IM
I made a 5 hour neural networks class with no prerequisites▲17
2017 · neuralnetsforhackers.teachable.com · its alternatives →
8BH
Beating Hinton et al.'s capsule net with fewer params and less training▲14
Hello HN, I recently posted a work-in-progress paper, along with code necessary for replicating all its results, at: https://github.com/glassroom/heinsen_routing Among other things, the code in this repo outperforms Hinton et al.'s recent state-of-the-art result in visual recognition[0] while requiring fewer parameters and an order-of-magnitude fewer training epochs. Most of the original research we do at work tends to be either proprietary in nature or tightly coupled to internal code, so we cannot share it with the world. In this case, however, I was able to remove all…
2019 · its alternatives →
9
I wrote an autodiff in C++ and implemented LeNet with it▲36
2024 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →
10
I built a deep learning engine from scratch in Python▲30
I’ve spent the last few months building a deep learning engine completely from scratch in Python (using only math and random). What started as a basic linear algebra calculator project grew into a symbolic tensor system with autodiff, custom matrix ops, attention mechanisms, LayerNorm, GELU, and even a text generation demo trained on the Brown corpus. I'm still an undergrad, so my main goal is to deeply understand how deep learning actually works under the hood - gradients, attention, backpropagation, optimizers - by building it step-by-step with full visibility into everything, and without…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
I wrote a minimal deep learning library from scratch in Python▲25
A minimalist deep learning library written from scratch in Python - sradc/SmallPebble
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
I wrote my first Neural Network▲6
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
We built an AI Website builder with better output▲8
Hey HN, After GPT-3 created waves in the tech industry, a lot of AI tools were emerging and with that, some AI website builders But the results seemed way too generic to us. It felt like the developers were rushing to catch the wave instead of building a proper tool We took our time, did months of RnD and finally came up with something better than what others in the market are doing. It’s got better design output. While it’s still in beta, I wanted to show HN what we did. Will appreciate the feedback when you guys try it out. Here is the link to signup for the beta:…
2024 · dorik.com · its alternatives →
14
Make Your Own Neural Network▲6
An In-depth Visual Introduction For Beginners
2017 · amazon.com · its alternatives →
15
To better understand Neural Networks I built one from scratch in C++▲10
Trying to understand neural nets by building a simple one from scratch - kretash/BasicNeuralNet
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
BlockDL▲12
Hi everyone. Designing neural network architectures is inherently a visual process. Every time I train a new model, I find myself sketching it out on paper before translating it into code (and still running into shape mismatches no matter how many networks I've built). So I built BlockDL: a free and open-source tool to design neural networks visually in your browser. It updates live Python/Keras code as you build, and automatically checks for shape and connectivity errors in real time. It supports: - Most common layer types (Conv2D, Dense, LSTM, etc.) - Multiple input/output…
2025 · blockdl.com · its alternatives →
17
Reimplementing PyTorch from scratch (MLP, CNN) to learn the internals▲5
Implement classic neural networks from scratch without using nn.Module, to deeply understand PyTorch and model principles. - geyuxu/nn-from-scratch
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
18
The No-Code Tool I built for my own AI Experiments▲5
Hi guys, I’m excited to share an update on ReproModel, an open-source toolbox designed to streamline the testing and reproduction of machine learning models. I, like many of you, have really struggled with benchmarking and comparing models, from missing code, to opaque experiment parameters slowing the process. I decided to take matters into my own hands, and created a mini-toolbox in my free time to streamline the process. The goal is to reduce the time and effort spent on replicating experiments, enabling researchers to focus on innovation rather than setup. Knowing this task is not an…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
The Jac Programming Language▲9
After 6 years of coding almost every day, I'm finally ready to show HN. There's a lot going on here, looking forward to your guy's feedback.
Jul 2026 · jaclang.org · its alternatives →
20
I wrote a book about Grokking Deep Learning▲5
Build neural networks from scratch and truly understand deep learning!
2019 · manning.com · its alternatives →
21IB
I Built an AI-Powered System to Help You Learn Any Skill in 30 Days▲9
Hey all, I’ve been working on a project that aims to change how we approach learning new skills. The idea is simple — you can master any skill in 30 days using a personalized learning plan powered by AI and Notion. They keys: practice and discipline. How it works: You can fill out a Typeform, and our AI will create a customized 30-day program just for you. Structured learning: Each day, the system provides you with a clear task or lesson based on science-backed learning principles. Track progress: It’s all managed in Notion, so you can stay organized and motivated while learning. Why I built…
2025 · 30daysmethod.com · its alternatives →
22
I built an AI visionboards site▲8
Hello everyone, I doubt this would be relevant to the kind of person who uses HN, but I thought I could share for some feedback. I built this site because there is a whole world of people who believe in new age spirituality and I am very much one of them. It is a site where you get the users gender their goals and their images and use AI and psychology to generate images of them in the process of achieving their goals. I am so deeply struggling with how to get this highly on Google. I don't even know if that is important anymore. What are your suggestions with distribution and getting in…
2025 · visionboardsai.com · its alternatives →
23
I built a Macrodata Refinement game inspired by Severance▲5
Fully leaned into vibe coding this time around. Started on v0, at some point ejected into running locally (getting v0's exported folder to run locally was a challenge), then iterated with Cursor over the course of a few hours. Really neat how much can be accomplished just conversationally these days.
2025 · macrodata-refinement.arjit.me · its alternatives →
24
MLGarden, a tool/toy to build and train simple neural networks visually▲11
I made this tool to get some better intuition on how neural networks/backpropagation worked, but I'm really unsure what to do with it now, so I've put it up on github, and I wrote a little primer on backprop and neural networks to showcase it. Really curious to hear any thoughts you might have, or anything I got wrong in the write up!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →