--- title: Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch... description: A free video course from freeCodeCamp.org teaches how to build a reinforcement learning framework entirely from scratch in pure C, without relying on libraries... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch in Pure C | daily.dev og:description: A free video course from freeCodeCamp.org teaches how to build a reinforcement learning framework entirely from scratch in pure C, without relying on libraries... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lKvHMBpg7.png og:image:alt: Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch in Pure C og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch in Pure C **[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A free video course from freeCodeCamp.org teaches how to build a reinforcement learning framework entirely from scratch in pure C, without relying on libraries like PyTorch or TensorFlow. The 2-hour course covers implementing custom automatic differentiation, dynamic computational graphs, matrix operations, ReLU and Softmax routines, a Snake game simulation environment, and a full policy gradient training pipeline including trajectory rollouts and advantage estimation. The goal is to build deep intuition for how neural networks and backpropagation work under the hood. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do you build a reinforcement learning framework from scratch in C without using PyTorch or TensorFlow? You implement the core machine learning primitives manually, including custom automatic differentiation with dynamic computational graphs, memory allocation systems, and matrix structures for forward and backward gradient passes. You also code linear algebra operations like transposed matrix multiplication, ReLU, and numerically stable Softmax, then build a Snake game environment and a policy gradient pipeline with trajectory rollouts, replay buffers, and advantage estimation to train the agent. _daily.dev surfaces deep systems-level tutorials for developers building ML internals from first principles._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Deep Reinforcement Learning: 0 to 100](https://daily.dev/posts/deep-reinforcement-learning-0-to-100-lzn8xe7qv) · Towards Data Science · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Build a Simple Deep Learning Library](https://daily.dev/posts/build-a-simple-deep-learning-library-xcnv0oi0i) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#c](https://daily.dev/tags/c), [#neural-networks](https://daily.dev/tags/neural-networks), [#reinforcement-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/reinforcement-learning) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch in Pure C","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T16:55:12.098Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:18:56.080Z","description":"A free video course from freeCodeCamp.org teaches how to build a reinforcement learning framework entirely from scratch in pure C, without relying on libraries...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a448c9181a90387283c27af7962af8c3?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a448c9181a90387283c27af7962af8c3?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"freeCodeCamp","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"freeCodeCamp","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1628412854/logos/freecodecamp","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"machine-learning,c,neural-networks,reinforcement-learning","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"freeCodeCamp","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Building a Reinforcement Learning Framework from Scratch in Pure C"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/building-a-reinforcement-learning-framework-from-scratch-in-pure-c-lkvhmbpg7#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How do you build a reinforcement learning framework from scratch in C without using PyTorch or TensorFlow?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"You implement the core machine learning primitives manually, including custom automatic differentiation with dynamic computational graphs, memory allocation systems, and matrix structures for forward and backward gradient passes. You also code linear algebra operations like transposed matrix multiplication, ReLU, and numerically stable Softmax, then build a Snake game environment and a policy gradient pipeline with trajectory rollouts, replay buffers, and advantage estimation to train the agent. daily.dev surfaces deep systems-level tutorials for developers building ML internals from first principles."}}]} ```