Show HN: Enlight – Learn to code by building projects

I think project based learning is the only way to actually learn programming. It&#x27;s why most people suggest new programmers to &quot;just build something they want&quot; (which I think is bad advice). It&#x27;s easy to envision a person reading 20 books and taking 3 MOOCs on programming not being able to tic tac toe game. It is far more difficult to envision someone who built 10 projects not being able to program.<p>What I dislike about the projects linked is that they give you all the code, rather than just giving you the challenge. Shameless plug: I started a blog about programming challenges (projects, not algorithms) where you just get the tests and you have to write the code. The first (and only, for now) project is a URL shortener: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cmocanu.github.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;post&#x2F;url_shortener&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cmocanu.github.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;post&#x2F;url_shortener&#x2F;</a>

The [nodejs chat application](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryenlight.github.io&#x2F;nodejs-chat" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryenlight.github.io&#x2F;nodejs-chat</a>) should at least briefly run through the perils of XSS and ways to sanitize inputs. The chat app lets you inject arbitrary javascript&#x2F;html&#x2F;css which noobs may not consider at all.<p>Otherwise, great idea! Should help a lot of people

Shameless plug but once I made a repository of projects to learn programming: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tuvtran&#x2F;project-based-learning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tuvtran&#x2F;project-based-learning</a>

I get a number of people asking me how to become a programmer as a second career. For most of them, I wouldn&#x27;t recommend going to college for it, but instead learn it on the side. Project-based learning I think is the best because it matches more &quot;real world&quot; programming and it&#x27;s fun to see the results of your work. This seems like a good resource that fits right into that approach. I&#x27;ll be passing this on to others. Good job!

I would add some depth to some of the beginner&#x2F;intermediate tutorials. For example, in the to-do list project you could introduce something like localStorage to make it persistent. It&#x27;s only a few more lines of code but opens up a whole new topic.

This looks interesting. Do you want some feedback about the homepage?<p>This: <i>&quot;Subscribe to email list: Join 1,000+ developers and get notified of new projects&quot;</i> makes me wonder: what kind of projects will I get notified about? Can I get notified only about certain types of projects that I&#x27;m interested in?<p>And how often will I get notified, is that configurable? Once a week, or every 2nd week, is probably enough for me. My inbox gets too many notification emails already.<p>I&#x27;d definitely sign up for notifications, if I could choose to receive only notifications about stuff similar to Discourse, Slack, StackOverflow, Disqus, wiki software, Diaspora, Facebook, Scuttlebutt, which I&#x27;m particularly interested in.<p>Nice initiative :- )

There&#x27;s a gradual color change in the header of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryenlight.github.io&#x2F;guide" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryenlight.github.io&#x2F;guide</a>, which is fine and all except the text isn&#x27;t legible when the color is red.

The animation of what you&#x27;re going to build before even clicking on it is super neat, kudos!

I subscribed via MailChimp and got a link to go back to <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;enlight.ml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;enlight.ml</a> but a MacKeeper ad popped up. I tried again in incognito and it showed some other generic ads. Probably a bug?

Another shameless plug for <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sudo.org.au&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sudo.org.au&#x2F;</a>. We do exactly this, thanks for sharing shamdasani! :)

A question. For the database side of things, do mainstream chat apps use the PubSub model? If not, what then?

What would make these dramatically more fun for me is the examples instead being exercises

Fantastic! Conveys complex problems in a simple, easy to consume manner. Well done!

You&#x27;re a class act, shamdasani. Thanks for sharing. :)

Learning to program right now. This is highly motivating!

feature request: add discussion page for project discussion, getting help, suggestions, etc.

This looks fun, good job

S-H-A-M then Dasani like the water company nothin to it.

Chrome thinks &quot;This page is in [Luxembourgish]&quot; ... wtf?