LLM Engineer's Handbook cover
LLM Engineer's Handbook
by PAUL. LABONNE IUSZTIN (MAXIME. VESA, ALEX.), Maxime Labonne, Alex Vesa
Description: LLM Engineer's Handbook provides a practical guide to building, refining, and deploying large language models, covering data preparation, fine-tuning, and operational best practices for production environments
ISBN: 9781836200079
Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
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hedgehog0 · 2025-08-04 · Original thread
Thank you for your suggestions!

Originally I was more interested in ML/DL theory and mech interp, so you can see I was more into theory. Recently, I am also curious and leaning towards learning more about how to build products with foundational models, such as LLM; for instance, recently I got the "LLM's Engineer Handbook [1]".

> If you want to work with ML you likely need the PhD + get lucky.

I do am interested in doing PhD in theoretical computer science, but I'm not too sure about AI PhD as I heard many (not-so-good) things about it.

> If you are interested on it because of AI, it's better to focus on LLMs and more NLP related fields.

Do you have any recomenndations that you have gone through that you think are helpful?

[1]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/llm-engineers-handbook/...

mindcrime · 2024-10-09 · Original thread
There are a couple of new books on the topic that are slated to drop any day now, IIRC. Of what's already published, a few I'm familiar with include:

Transformers for Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision: Explore Generative AI and Large Language Models with Hugging Face, ChatGPT, GPT-4V, and DALL-E 3

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1805128728/

Transformer, BERT, and GPT: Including ChatGPT and Prompt Engineering

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1683928989/

Introduction to Transformers for NLP: With the Hugging Face Library and Models to Solve Problems

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484288432

Transformers for Machine Learning: A Deep Dive

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0367767341/

Natural Language Processing with Transformers, Revised Edition

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1098136799

EDIT:

a couple of the ones that I thought were still pending have now been released. I haven't read any of these, but they are ones that caught my eye and that I was planning to get:

Large Language Models: A Deep Dive: Bridging Theory and Practice

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3031656466

Building LLMs for Production: Enhancing LLM Abilities and Reliability with Prompting, Fine-Tuning, and RAG

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D4FFPFW8

Building LLM Powered Applications: Create intelligent apps and agents with large language models

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1835462316

The "not yet released" group still includes:

Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) (ships Oct. 29th)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1633437167

LLM Engineer's Handbook: Master the art of engineering Large Language Models from concept to production (ships Nov. 11th)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1836200072

Hands-On Large Language Models: Language Understanding and Generation (ships ???)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1098150961