alt Hacker NewsI kept noticing that most "learn to code" content is tutorials you copy-paste, so I never had to actually understand why anything worked. I built this to flip that: each lesson gives you a real spec (e.g. implement the Redis SET/GET protocol) and you write the code yourself, then it actually runs against tests. Right now there are 80+ of these "build X from scratch" courses — Redis, a database, Git, a compiler, a container runtime, a raft KV store, etc. — across Python, Go, Rust, C, C++, and others. Would love feedback, especially on where the early lessons feel too hand-holdy or too sparse.
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First impression - looks great. Congrats.
I have couple of questions:
* I didn't see any AI mention, was it entirely built by humans without AI ?
* Were will the tests run ? Your servers or the user machines ? If on your servers, how do you plan to cover the costs if you don't charge for the service ?
* Will you accept contrbutions to the teaching material? How can other people contribute to the teaching material ? What is the AI policy for contributors ?
Is this going to remain free? I´d love an open source project like this where I could run the tests in my own machine.
I've helped people get into programming face to face and also in a site I liked called exercism which also had a multi language track unit test passing style which I really value and it was purely command line, and I can't stress enough how important the command line is for me for people who want to dabble. Nowadays it's easier to get people into the command line because of Claude/codex.
I only have browsed your site from a phone and looks interesting but I wanted to ask if you had particular insights around getting people to approach learning, design through tests, breaking down problems, without having someone to guide them. Have you had a chance to observe people using your tool and adjust or it's been mostly dog fooding something you would've loved to have.