Imad Dabbura
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All (40)
Airflow (8)
C (1)
Data Engineering (8)
Data Science (9)
Deep Learning (17)
MLOps (10)
MLSys (6)
Machine Learning (14)
NLP (7)
Personal Growth (1)
Product Management (1)
Python (1)
RAG (1)
SWE (4)
Unsupervised Learning (1)
Website Optimization (1)

Blog

Make ML Systems Ship Again

Use the Theory of Constraints to replace incremental tweaks with step-function wins.
MLSys
MLOps
Machine Learning
Data Science
Deep Learning
Sep 21, 2025
Imad Dabbura
25 min
Sep 24, 2025

Devising a Plan: The Creative Heart of ML Problem Solving

How Pólya’s Step 2 powers reliable DS/ML/AI systems under real-world limits.
MLSys
Deep Learning
Machine Learning
Data Science
Mar 15, 2025
Imad Dabbura
70 min
Mar 25, 2025

Understand, Then Build

How Pólya’s Step 1 powers reliable DS/ML/AI systems under real-world limits.
MLSys
Deep Learning
Machine Learning
Data Science
Mar 9, 2025
Imad Dabbura
53 min
Mar 5, 2025

The Production ML Survival Guide

What I Learned Deploying Models That Serve Millions While Others Failed at Launch
MLSys
MLOps
Machine Learning
Data Science
Deep Learning
Jan 29, 2025
Imad Dabbura
55 min
Jun 12, 2025

Hard-Learned Lessons in Shipping Software (AI/ML) Projects

A Guide for Engineers and Product Managers
Product Management
Jan 5, 2025
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Jan 5, 2025

From Forgetting to Fluency: How to Learn Smarter, Not Harder

Evidence-based tips from cognitive science to transform the way you absorb, retain, and apply knowledge in any field.
Personal Growth
Sep 13, 2024
Imad Dabbura
7 min
Sep 13, 2024

Why You Should Ditch Softmax in Your Neural Network’s Final Layer

Discover the hidden drawbacks of softmax—and why raw logits often lead to faster, more stable, and more accurate training
Deep Learning
Jun 9, 2024
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Jun 9, 2024

Cutting the Fat: A Practical Guide to Neural Network Pruning

From weight sparsity to hardware-aware strategies—learn how to shrink deep learning models without shrinking their performance
Deep Learning
May 3, 2024
Imad Dabbura
4 min
May 3, 2024

Building GPT(2/3) from Scratch: Turning Theory into a Working Transformer

A hands-on journey through implementing the 124M GPT architecture in PyTorch—complete with attention mechanisms, optimizations, and the lessons learned along the way
NLP
Deep Learning
Apr 10, 2024
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Jun 1, 2025

Tokenization Uncovered: How BPE Shapes the Mind of a Language Model

A deep dive into the algorithm that compresses text, balances trade-offs, and defines how AI perceives meaning
NLP
Deep Learning
Apr 10, 2024
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Jan 13, 2025

The RAG Optimization Playbook

Proven tactics, pitfalls, and fine-tuning methods to build faster, smarter, and more accurate retrieval-augmented generation systems
NLP
RAG
Mar 5, 2024
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Jun 30, 2024

Inside Python’s Modules and Packages: The Machinery Behind import

Explore the inner workings of Python’s import system, including path resolution, package types, importlib internals, and advanced import hacks
Python
SWE
Feb 9, 2024
Imad Dabbura
20 min
Feb 9, 2024

Automatic Differentiation Demystified

From dual numbers to backpropagation, uncover the inner workings of forward and reverse mode AD and the performance trade-offs that shape deep learning
MLSys
Feb 3, 2024
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Feb 3, 2024

Git from the Inside Out

An in-depth guide to Git’s object model, branching mechanics, and the hidden workflows that make it so powerful
SWE
Dec 22, 2023
Imad Dabbura
38 min
Dec 22, 2023

I Built My Own PyTorch (Tiny Version) — Here’s Everything I Learned

Inside the engineering decisions, optimizations, and trade-offs behind a homegrown deep learning framework
MLSys
Dec 20, 2023
Imad Dabbura
15 min
Dec 20, 2023

Attention Is All You Need… But Here’s the Rest

A practical, code-first breakdown of Transformers—covering the theory, the math, and how to implement every architecture variant
NLP
Deep Learning
Feb 14, 2023
Imad Dabbura
13 min
Feb 14, 2023

Breaking Text Apart (The Smart Way)

From single characters to advanced subword splits — see how modern tokenizers like WordPiece and SentencePiece prepare language for AI.
NLP
Jan 14, 2023
Imad Dabbura
7 min
Mar 7, 2024

Inside LSTMs: Implementing and Optimizing Sequential Models from First Principles

A deep dive into LSTM internals—covering the math, gates, performance considerations, and a full PyTorch-aligned implementation from scratch.
NLP
Deep Learning
Dec 10, 2022
Imad Dabbura
6 min
Dec 10, 2022

C Program Startup

Does C program really start at main?
SWE
C
Oct 21, 2022
Imad Dabbura
6 min
Oct 21, 2022

Airflow Part 8 - Best Practices

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Mar 28, 2022
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Mar 28, 2022

Airflow Part 7 - Triggering Workflows

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Mar 14, 2022
Imad Dabbura
8 min
Mar 14, 2022

Airflow Part 6 - Sharing Data Between Tasks

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Feb 28, 2022
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Feb 28, 2022

Airflow Part 5 - Dependencies Between Tasks

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Feb 14, 2022
Imad Dabbura
7 min
Feb 14, 2022

Airflow Part 4 - Task Context & Jinja Templating

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Feb 7, 2022
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Feb 7, 2022

Airflow Part 3 - DAG Scheduling

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Jan 24, 2022
Imad Dabbura
6 min
Jan 24, 2022

Airflow Part 2 - DAGs

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Jan 17, 2022
Imad Dabbura
3 min
Jan 17, 2022

Airflow Part 1 - What is Airflow?

Data Engineering
MLOps
Airflow
Jan 10, 2022
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Jan 10, 2022

Anomaly Detection

Machine Learning
Data Science
Sep 11, 2019
Imad Dabbura
6 min
Sep 11, 2019

Conda Essentials

Enough background about Conda to be productive!
SWE
Feb 18, 2019
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Feb 18, 2019

Gradient Descent Algorithm and Its Variants

Deep dive into gradient descent algorithm: Batch vs. Mini-batch vs. Stochastic.
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
Feb 18, 2019
Imad Dabbura
10 min
Feb 18, 2019

K-means Clustering: Algorithm, Applications, Evaluation Methods, and Drawbacks

Deep dive into K-means algorithm to find subgroups within data.
Machine Learning
Data Science
Unsupervised Learning
Sep 11, 2018
Imad Dabbura
15 min
Sep 11, 2018

Coding Neural Network Part 5 - Dropout

What is Dropout, its use, and how to implement it?
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
May 20, 2018
Imad Dabbura
4 min
May 20, 2018

Coding Neural Network Part 4 - Regularization

What is regularization and how it helps NN generalizes better?
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
May 8, 2018
Imad Dabbura
9 min
May 8, 2018

Coding Neural Network Part 3 - Parameters’ Initialization

The role of parameter initialization in training and different ways to initialize parameters.
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
Apr 20, 2018
Imad Dabbura
5 min
Apr 20, 2018

Coding Neural Network Part 2 - Gradient Checking

How to check numerically if the implementation of backward propagation is correct?
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
Apr 8, 2018
Imad Dabbura
4 min
Apr 8, 2018

Coding Neural Network Part 1 - Forward & Backward Propagation

What it takes to go from input to output? And how to compute the gradients?
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
Apr 1, 2018
Imad Dabbura
11 min
Apr 1, 2018

Bandit Algorithms: epsilon-Greedy Algorithm

What is epsilon-Greedy Algorithm and how to use it in A/B testing?
Data Science
Website Optimization
Mar 31, 2018
Imad Dabbura
9 min
Mar 31, 2018

Predicting Loan Repayment

Trying different modeling techniques to deal with imbalanced data, missing values, and ensemble models.
Machine Learning
Data Science
Mar 15, 2018
Imad Dabbura
17 min
Mar 15, 2018

Character-Level Language Model

Predict the next character given the previous charecter and state.
NLP
Deep Learning
Feb 22, 2018
Imad Dabbura
13 min
Feb 22, 2018

Predicting Employee Turnover

Experimenting with different models on employee turnover data.
Machine Learning
Data Science
Dec 11, 2017
Imad Dabbura
9 min
Dec 11, 2017
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