A neural network written by someone who only knew a neural network by the diagrams in popular tech blogs.

This project started as a result of the July 2015 London Python Dojo, whose task was to write an AI that could play Battleships. And Simon Davy proposed that we on his team use a neural network to try and do this. We assumed there were going to be easy to use, robust libraries to build and train neural nets.

Turns out PyBrain, the main package to do this, is hard to use. We spent the entire dojo trying to figure out how to use it and afterwards I discovered that it was badly fitted to the task we wanted to attempt.

So instead of giving up I looked at the wikipedia page for neural networks and went "This can't be that hard". Spoiler alert: it was quite hard.

Thanks to Al, Matt, everyone who attended the July London Python Project Night for the help, encouragement and assorted heckling. Thanks to Simon Davy for putting me on this mad quest.