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What is courses?

fastai/courses — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-26

5,735Jupyter NotebookAudience · dataComplexity · 2/5Setup · moderate

In one sentence

The 2017 fast.ai Practical Deep Learning for Coders course, Jupyter notebooks teaching working programmers to build and train deep learning models using the fast.ai library on top of PyTorch, with a hands-on-first approach.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((fastai courses))
    Content
      Image classification
      Natural language
      Structured data
    Format
      Jupyter notebooks
      Executable code
      Written explanations
    Tech stack
      PyTorch backend
      fast.ai library
      Python
    Context
      2017 edition
      UW-Madison origin
      Newer versions exist
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Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Follow the 2017 fast.ai course notebooks to learn practical deep learning from scratch as a working programmer.

USE CASE 2

Run Jupyter notebooks to experiment with image classification, NLP, and other deep learning tasks hands-on.

USE CASE 3

Use the fast.ai library examples to understand how to train neural networks with less boilerplate than raw PyTorch.

What is it built with?

PythonJupyter NotebookPyTorchfast.ai

How does it compare?

fastai/coursesjeffheaton/t81_558_deep_learningchaoningzhang/mobilesam
Stars5,7355,7445,752
LanguageJupyter NotebookJupyter NotebookJupyter Notebook
Setup difficultymoderateeasymoderate
Complexity2/53/53/5
Audiencedataresearcherresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Training exercises are impractical without a GPU, use a cloud GPU service like Kaggle or Paperspace.

So what is it?

This repository contains the lecture materials from the 2017 edition of Practical Deep Learning for Coders, a course offered by fast.ai. The course is aimed at working programmers who want to learn how to build and train machine learning models, with an emphasis on getting hands-on results quickly rather than starting from mathematical theory. The materials are stored as Jupyter notebooks, which are documents that combine written explanations with executable code in the same file. Learners can open them, read through the content, and run the code examples directly to see results. This format makes it easier to follow along and experiment with changes without setting up a separate project. The README is brief and mostly directs students to the course website, the community forums, and the wiki for support. The forums and wiki are described as the main resources for getting help when something goes wrong, with the advice that most common questions have already been answered there. GitHub Issues on this repository are not the right place for debugging questions, according to the README. Fast.ai has since released updated course versions, so this repository represents an older iteration of their curriculum. The content covers practical deep learning techniques using the fast.ai library, which wraps around PyTorch to make training models more accessible. Students interested in the current course materials would typically look at fast.ai's more recent repositories rather than this one.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I'm starting the fast.ai 2017 course, help me set up the right Python environment to run the first Jupyter notebook for image classification.
Prompt 2
Show me how to train an image classifier on my own dataset using the fast.ai library pattern from the 2017 course notebooks.
Prompt 3
I want to adapt the fast.ai course image classification notebook to use my own folder of photos. How do I change the data loading code?
Prompt 4
What's the difference between this 2017 fast.ai course repo and the current fast.ai courses I should be following today?

Frequently asked questions

What is courses?

The 2017 fast.ai Practical Deep Learning for Coders course, Jupyter notebooks teaching working programmers to build and train deep learning models using the fast.ai library on top of PyTorch, with a hands-on-first approach.

What language is courses written in?

Mainly Jupyter Notebook. The stack also includes Python, Jupyter Notebook, PyTorch.

How hard is courses to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is courses for?

Mainly data.

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