> So the question is, how does an average joe hacker like me exploit and leverage this wonderful thing called deep learning? I'm not interested in reading PHD p

> So the question is, how does an average joe hacker like me exploit and leverage this wonderful thing called deep learning? I'm not interested in reading PHD papers with advanced calculus. You've got a lot of comments like "if you're not willing to read a paper with BASIC CALCULUS ... then I'm not sure machine learning is the right place for you" to this, but I second you on this. I do have a PhD in CS and not afraid of calculus in papers. I just don't think reading PhD papers is the best path to getting practical results in DL/ML. "Not right place for you" is the sign of the "exclusiveness" problem. I'd recommend checking the following course by Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas: http://course.fast.ai/ http://course.fast.ai/ It is designed to make DL accessible and achieves its goal very well. I'm not sure if the average Joe Hacker will be able to write top-pocker-players-beating program after this course, but it definitely gives enough insight and practice to get started in DL and be able to design and code solutions in a large number of problem classess.