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José David Baena

Guided Series

Topic-based courses and research dossiers designed to be read in order. For studies organized around one specific codebase, browse open-source studies.

Start with the problem you have

You do not need to begin at chapter one. Follow a short path from the failure boundary to a practical decision.

Featured Series

Complete Series

9 series
Kafka Engineering
complete
📡

Kafka Engineering

A source-guided course on Kafka protocol internals, platform ownership, KRaft and KIP-848 migrations, compatibility, portability, performance, and production failure boundaries.

13/13episodes
•
176min read
•advanced
Progress100%
kafkadistributed-systemsprotocols+4
Zero-Copy: Philosophy & Practice
complete
⚡

Zero-Copy: Philosophy & Practice

Eight essays on data-movement ownership across Linux networking, storage, kernel bypass, RDMA, accelerators, serialization, and the failure modes that make copying cheaper.

8/8episodes
•
145min read
•advanced
Progress100%
performancesystemslinux+5
Mermaid Diagrams in Next.js
complete
📊

Mermaid Diagrams in Next.js

A journey from over-engineered build-time rendering to elegant client-side solutions. Explores three architectures and learns valuable lessons about premature optimization.

4/4episodes
•
90min read
•intermediate
Progress100%
nextjsmermaidoptimization+1
Tiny Language Models
complete
🤖

Tiny Language Models

Master efficient LLMs under 3B parameters—models that match 5× larger competitors on reasoning tasks. From distillation to edge deployment, learn the techniques making AI accessible everywhere.

10/10episodes
•
208min read
•advanced
Progress100%
llmmachine-learningai+2
Distilled Engineering
complete
⚗️

Distilled Engineering

Eight field guides adapted from Distilled: The Engineering of Small, Fast, Cheap AI Models, from transfer signals and synthetic curricula to release pipelines and specialist fleets.

8/8episodes
•
109min read
•advanced
Progress100%
knowledge-distillationsmall-language-modelsmodel-compression+3
Frontier Model Engineering
complete
🧭

Frontier Model Engineering

Four hands-on workshops for taking any model release from artifact audit to durable agents, long-context storage, and topology-aware multi-GPU inference.

4/4episodes
•
75min read
•advanced
Progress100%
llmai-engineeringmodel-audit+4
Kimi K3: Architecture, Serving, and Economics
complete
🌒

Kimi K3: Architecture, Serving, and Economics

A source-guided engineering study of Kimi K3 plus a lab track that turns its architecture, API, optimizer, routing, and memory ideas into reproducible experiments.

6/6episodes
•
111min read
•advanced
Progress100%
kimi-k3llmmachine-learning+4
NanoChat: Building ChatGPT for $100
complete
🤖

NanoChat: Building ChatGPT for $100

Comprehensive technical analysis of Andrej Karpathy's nanochat project. Deep dives into architecture, training pipeline, optimizers, and proposals for evolving this minimal LLM implementation.

13/13episodes
•
293min read
•intermediate
Progress100%
llmmachine-learningai+3
Redpanda 26.1 Architecture and Operations
complete
🐼

Redpanda 26.1 Architecture and Operations

An eight-part source-guided study of Redpanda 26.1.13: Kafka compatibility, Raft durability, storage, remote data, transforms, RPC, cluster control, and benchmark design.

8/8episodes
•
92min read
•advanced
Progress100%
redpandastreamingkafka+6