Implementation-Focused AI Engineering Tutorials That Work


Zen van Riel - Senior AI Engineer

Zen van Riel - Senior AI Engineer

Senior AI Engineer & Teacher

As an expert in Artificial Intelligence, specializing in LLMs, I love to teach others AI engineering best practices. With real experience in the field working at big tech, I aim to teach you how to be successful with AI from concept to production. My blog posts are generated from my own video content which is referenced at the end of the post.

Most AI engineering tutorials stop at conceptual understanding, leaving a significant gap between what they teach and what employers need. Implementation-focused tutorials bridge this gap by showing how to build complete, production-ready systems.

Beyond Simplistic Examples

Standard AI tutorials typically:

  • Demonstrate basic API calls with pre-cleaned data
  • Skip essential infrastructure and deployment considerations
  • Ignore error handling and edge cases
  • Avoid system design and architecture discussions

These limitations create engineers who understand concepts but struggle to build reliable solutions.

Implementation-Focused Approach

Effective AI engineering tutorials take a different approach:

  • Start with complete working systems rather than isolated components
  • Address real-world constraints and limitations
  • Include deployment, monitoring, and maintenance strategies
  • Demonstrate integration with existing systems

This approach builds immediately applicable implementation skills.

Learning Through Complete Projects

The most valuable tutorials structure learning around building progressively sophisticated projects:

  • Starting with end-to-end implementations
  • Addressing common production challenges
  • Including proper error handling and fallback mechanisms
  • Demonstrating performance optimization strategies

This approach teaches not just how features work, but how to build reliable systems.

Practitioner Insight Value

Tutorials created by active practitioners provide unique advantages:

  • Sharing hard-won implementation experience
  • Focusing on problems actually encountered in production
  • Including the latest best practices
  • Showing how to navigate trade-offs in real scenarios

This real-world insight accelerates practical skill development far beyond theoretical understanding.

Looking for AI engineering tutorials that focus on implementation rather than just concepts? Join the AI Engineering community to access structured tutorials created by practitioners who build production AI systems daily, with careful attention to the challenges you’ll face in real development environments.