Go Mastery 7: Projects That Prove Mastery

Level 1: Consolidation

1. CLI todo app: file storage (JSON), subcommands, tests
2. Word frequency counter: concurrent file reading
3. URL shortener: HTTP + in-memory map, then add a DB

Level 2: Intermediate

4. Concurrent web crawler: worker pool, context, depth and rate limit
5. REST API with Postgres: users, auth (JWT), CRUD, sqlc, migrations, tests
6. Chat server: WebSockets, rooms, broadcast with goroutines/channels
7. Rate limiter library: token bucket and sliding window, generic, benchmarked

Level 3: Advanced

8. In-memory key-value store (mini Redis): TCP server, RESP protocol, TTLs, persistence
9. Job queue / task scheduler: workers, retries, backoff, persistence
10. Load balancer / reverse proxy: round-robin, health checks, httputil.ReverseProxy
11. Distributed key-value store: Raft (see Hashicorp raft or MIT 6.5840 labs)

Level 4: Mastery

12. Write your own interpreter: Writing an Interpreter in Go by Thorsten Ball
13. Contribute to open source: start with good first issue in Go projects (Hugo, Cobra, Caddy, Gitea, Prometheus, etc.)
14. Publish a library with docs, tests, semver tags, and CI

Visual: progression

flowchart LR
  L1["Level 1<br/>CLI, counter, shortener"] --> L2["Level 2<br/>crawler, REST API, chat"]
  L2 --> L3["Level 3<br/>mini Redis, queue, proxy"]
  L3 --> L4["Level 4<br/>interpreter, open source"]

Portfolio rules

• Every project: README, tests, CI, go vet clean, -race clean
• Write at least one benchmark and one fuzz test
• Document design decisions

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