# Build an LLM from Scratch by Sebastian Raschka

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Build an LLM from Scratch by Sebastian Raschka and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Readers say working through it built a real understanding of transformers and backpropagation, and the author made it free to read online.

## Why people recommend it

- Clear explanations of new concepts (2 comments): "I think it's an excellent book! One of my barriers in ML is the resources, I find them overcomplicated or too simplistic without a mid term." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421097)) "this book is almost perfect. Every new concept is well described and every is well founded." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50247727))
- Builds real understanding of transformers (2 comments): "I feel like I didn’t really understand the transformer mechanism until I worked through that book." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47393509)) "finally getting how back propagation works via autograd etc. was really fun and enlightening" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50247502))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) by Sebastian Raschka](https://hackerapproved.com/p/build-a-large-language-model.md): 16 recommend
- [Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python-data-science-handbook.md): 8 recommend
- [The Little Learner by Daniel P. Friedman and Anurag Mendhekar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/little-learner.md): 6 recommend
- [Probabilistic Machine Learning by Kevin Murphy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/probabilistic-machine-learning.md): 5 recommend
- [The Welch Labs Illustrated Guide to AI by Welch Labs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/welch-labs-illustrated-guide-to-ai.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Build+an+LLM+from+Scratch+by+Sebastian+Raschka&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Build an LLM from Scratch by Sebastian Raschka", https://hackerapproved.com/p/build-an-llm-from-scratch/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).