microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners

Generative AI for Beginners is a free 21-lesson course from Microsoft Cloud Advocates that teaches the basics of building applications with generative AI, the kind of AI that produces new text, images, or other content in response to a prompt. The course is aimed at people who are new to this area and want a structured walkthrough rather than scattered tutorials. The lessons are designed to stand on their own, so you can start at the beginning or jump to whichever topic interests you. Each lesson is tagged as either a Learn lesson, which explains a concept like how a language model works, or a Build lesson, which explains a concept and then walks through code examples in both Python and TypeScript where possible. Every lesson ends with a Keep Learning section pointing to extra material. A separate edition of the course exists for .NET developers in a sibling repository. To actually run the code samples, you pick one of three model services, Azure OpenAI Service, the GitHub Marketplace Model Catalog, or the OpenAI API, and the lessons are labeled to tell you which provider each assignment uses. A dedicated Course Setup lesson helps you prepare a working environment. You would use this if you are a beginner who wants to understand large language models and learn how to wire them into your own apps, or a developer adding generative-AI features and looking for Microsoft's free curriculum. The repository carries translations into more than fifty languages, generated automatically by a GitHub Action, and the README explains a sparse-checkout command for cloning only the English content to save space. There is also a Discord server linked from the README for meeting other learners and asking questions.