freeCodeCamp is Building a NEAR Curriculum

Update December 2022: The first group of projects is fully released. The newly available projects are "Learn NEAR Smart Contracts by Building a Word Guessing Game" and "Build a Sentence Making Smart Contract". The "When Will it be Available?" section has been updated to include the new projects.

Over the past 9 months, several of our instructors have been hard at work on a comprehensive NEAR curriculum. This will focus on NEAR's blockchain protocol and the NEAR tool ecosystem.

This curriculum is made possible by NEAR Foundation, who gave our charity a grant to 100% fund development of this curriculum.

What will it contain?

The curriculum will contain at least ten interactive practice projects that will guide you through learning the NEAR protocol and their tools.

You'll learn how to build and deploy your own smart contracts, dApps, work with NEAR command line tools, and much more. There will also be five challenging integrated projects to test your knowledge.

How will it work?

These courses will run in a docker container using VS Code and the freeCodeCamp Courses extension.

Here's a Sample of the first Project

When Will it be Available?

The courses will be released in batches. As we finish creating a group of projects, typically consisting of two interactive practice projects and one integrated project, they will be released for you to complete. The first group is available now! and consists of these projects:

• Learn How to Set Up NEAR by Building a Hello World Smart Contract
• Learn NEAR Smart Contracts by Building a Word Guessing Game
• Build a Sentence Making Smart Contract

How to Run the Courses

Follow the steps below to run the courses

Developer Environment Prerequisites

Before you get started, make sure you have these installed on your computer:

1. Docker Engine
2. VS Code and the Dev Containers extension
3. Git

How to Run the Curriculum in Docker

Follow these instructions to clone the repo and run the courses:

1. Open a terminal and clone the near-curriculum repo with:

   git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/near-curriculum.git
   

2. Navigate to the near-curriculum directory, and open it in a VSCode workspace with:

   code .
   

3. Press Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + P to open the command palette, and run Dev Containers: Rebuild Container and Reopen in Container. VS Code will build the container to run the projects in, it will take a few minutes the first time.

4. Once it's finished, press Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + P again and run freeCodeCamp: Run Course to start the courses. This will also take a moment.
5. The simple browser will open when it's done. If it's a blank white page, use the refresh button to update it and see the courses home page.
6. Click on one of the available projects to start a project.
7. Follow the instructions to complete the project.
8. Have fun!

If you want to switch projects, click the freeCodeCamp logo at the top to get back to the home page.

Sign up for updates

Fill out this google form to sign up to receive updates when new courses are released.

While You're Waiting

While you are waiting for these courses, you can try the Web3 curriculum (also under development). It will teach you many Web3 and blockchain concepts you will want to know for the NEAR curriculum.

Learn more about NEAR Foundation

You can learn more about NEAR Foundation by visiting their website.