# nanoGPT by Andrej Karpathy

8 Hacker News commenters recommended nanoGPT by Andrej Karpathy and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a dense, maximally educational GPT implementation by Andrej Karpathy, valued for teaching how language models work.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong machine learning education value (3 comments): "Between this, nanoGPT, and the Zero to Hero series, he has probably done more for ML education than most university programs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203987)) "did more to democratize AI understanding than most research papers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196401)) "his "zero to hero" videos, nanoGPT, etc, are all great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196169))
- Pairs with Zero to Hero videos (2 comments): "Between this, nanoGPT, and the Zero to Hero series, he has probably done more for ML education than most university programs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203987)) "his "zero to hero" videos, nanoGPT, etc, are all great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196169))
- Makes AI understanding more accessible (2 comments): "distilling all of his wisdom and taste into a very dense and maximally educational version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052562)) "did more to democratize AI understanding than most research papers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196401))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [microgpt by Andrej Karpathy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microgpt.md): 37 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "nanoGPT by Andrej Karpathy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nanogpt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).