Project Based Learning

What it is

Project Based Learning is a list of programming tutorials, kept in one README by the practical-tutorials organization. Each tutorial has you build something, such as a shell, a chat app or a blockchain. The list holds no lessons itself. Each line is a title and a link to a tutorial on someone else’s site: a blog post, a GitHub repository, a video or a course page. The README sorts them by primary programming language, with sub-sections inside the larger ones. CONTRIBUTING.md asks that a tutorial be free and open, and that following it ends with a complete, working project.

1. You pick a language
2. Open its section in the README
3. Choose a tutorial by what it builds
4. Follow the link to the author’s page
5. Build the project, part by part

Who it suits

Learners who know a little of a language and want a real project to follow, not another set of exercises. Teachers and mentors can hand out one link per learner. Developers picking up a second language can rebuild something familiar in it. Anyone can propose a tutorial through a pull request that meets CONTRIBUTING.md’s rules and passes the maker’s lint.

Skip it if you want one course with exercises and feedback. The list links to separate tutorials by many different authors.

Where to use it

The list works anywhere you can open a web page or a Markdown file.

• GitHub: the README, with a Table of Contents that links each language’s section
• A fork: the README says “To get started, simply fork this repo”
• A local copy: clone the repository, then read or search README.md by hand or with your coding agent
• Python 3: the maker’s lint and link checks run on README.md
• Each tutorial’s own site: every link opens a blog, a repository, a video or a course page

The README gives no steps for any coding agent. Mindket’s notes for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are ordinary steps for giving an agent a file to read, and they say so.

How to set it up

Get it saves a zip of Mindket’s setup notes in your downloads folder. The list itself needs no install. The README gives no install line either.

1. Read the README on GitHub.
2. To keep a copy, clone the repository with the line below. Then open the folder in your editor or coding agent.
3. To find a language, search for its name. Each language section starts with a heading line, and the kit’s read-and-search note shows a search that lists them.
4. To contribute, install Python 3, then run the lint from the repository’s root.

git clone https://github.com/practical-tutorials/project-based-learning.git

The clone line is ordinary Git on the address GitHub reports for the repository. The line below is copied from CONTRIBUTING.md and runs from the repository’s root. It must exit with status 0.

python3 scripts/check_readme.py lint

How to use it

Open the Table of Contents, pick a language and open its section. Each tutorial is one line. Some lines are tagged (video), and a series is a title line with its parts nested under it, often named Part 1, Part 2 and so on. Follow the link to the tutorial’s own page, since the README holds little more than a title and an address.

With an agent, name the file, the section and what you want to build.

Open README.md in this folder. List the tutorials in the Go section that build a server or a network client, with their links.

Example

You know Go and want a project that touches the network. You open the Go section, or ask your agent the prompt above. In the README read on 3 November 2026, the section holds these, among others:

- [Building a TCP Chat in Go(video)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sphme0BqJiY)
- [Building a BitTorrent client from the ground up in Go](https://blog.jse.li/posts/torrent/)

You pick the BitTorrent one. The README gave you its title and its link. The steps, the code and the requirements are on the page behind the link, so read the start of that page before you commit to it.

For newcomers and experts

If you are new. Project-based learning means you learn by building a finished program, not by doing small exercises. This list holds no lessons. It points to lessons that other people wrote. Start with a language you know a little, open its section, and pick a tutorial whose title tells you what you will end up with. Each tutorial sits on a different site, so one may suit you and the next may not.

For experts. The README is plain Markdown with a fixed grammar. The maker’s script, scripts/check_readme.py, parses it as data: a Table of Contents of anchors, ## sections that must each appear in it, ### and #### sub-sections, entry lines, and series with nested children. Lint errors include a duplicate URL, a URL shortener and an unparseable line. On a pull request, a new http:// link is an error too.

The weekly link check sorts each link into OK, HARD_DEAD, SUSPECT or BLOCKED, and keeps a two-strike record in .github/link-rot-state.json. A pull request removes entries that stayed dead on two checks in a row. Failures on the hosts listed in scripts/linkcheck-domains.txt (medium.com and its subdomains, towardsdatascience.com, reddit.com, twitter.com, x.com, linkedin.com, udemy.com and quora.com) count as BLOCKED, since the file says those sites block or challenge automated checks. Apart from medium.com, a listed host matches only exactly, so www.udemy.com is not covered. The script’s header calls README content and pull request diffs untrusted input. It sets a rule never to eval or exec it, pass it to a shell or build a command line from it.

Good to know

The list is only text, so nothing here runs on your machine unless you run the maker’s script, scripts/check_readme.py: its lint, or its link check, which sends web requests. The questions are about what it links to.

• License: MIT, “Copyright (c) 2021 practical-tutorials”, in LICENSE.md. It covers the repository’s own files: the README list, CONTRIBUTING.md, the check script and the workflows. Each linked tutorial has its own author, license and terms
• Someone else’s pages: the README holds titles and addresses. The tutorials, their code and their advice are on other sites, and they can change or disappear
• Age: the maker marks one Haskell entry as outdated, and its weekly check proposes removing links that stay dead. A link can answer and still be old, since the check tests that a page answers, not that it is current
• Free: CONTRIBUTING.md asks for free and open tutorials. The link check does not test whether a page is still free, so look before you start
• Outbound: reading on GitHub loads GitHub, and each link loads its own site. The lint makes no web requests. The link check sends at least one request to each link it checks: a HEAD, a GET when the HEAD fails, retries and redirects. Its User-Agent header names the repository
• Removal: delete the local copy’s folder, or the fork in its settings on GitHub (Mindket’s note, a GitHub feature, not a line from the README). Nothing else is installed