{"slug": "micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices", "title": "micromlp: A From-Scratch Neural Net That Predicts Housing Prices", "summary": "Developer soasme released micromlp, a single-file Python neural network with no dependencies that predicts California housing prices using a 2-layer MLP and from-scratch automatic differentiation, inspired by Karpathy's microgpt. The project aims to close the gap between using PyTorch's .backward() and understanding backpropagation by hand.", "body_md": "I built [micromlp](https://gist.github.com/soasme/913a4ab4c554d7874695450d5cd56e97): a single file of Python, no dependencies, no PyTorch. It downloads a real dataset, builds a 2-layer MLP, implements automatic differentiation from scratch, trains with gradient descent, and makes predictions. The task: the California housing dataset from chapter 2 of [Hands-On Machine Learning](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/hands-on-machine-learning/9781098125967/) — predict a district’s median house value from its census stats.\n\nThis is inspired by [Karpathy’s microgpt](https://karpathy.github.io/2026/02/12/microgpt/). I’ve used PyTorch for years. I’d never actually written backprop by hand. There’s a difference between knowing `.backward()`\n\nexists and knowing what it does when you call it — I found it worth closing that gap once, on a toy, instead of taking it on faith forever.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices", "canonical_source": "https://julin.ai/2026/08/29/micromlp/", "published_at": "2026-08-28 12:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-30 02:22:26.355420+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["machine-learning", "neural-networks", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["soasme", "micromlp", "Karpathy", "microgpt", "PyTorch", "California housing dataset", "Hands-On Machine Learning"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/micromlp-a-from-scratch-neural-net-that-predicts-housing-prices.jsonld"}}