[madsbuch]

Hmm, I would say that the key is figuring out what the project should be and how it should be carried out. That's where you need somebody mentoring.

You really don't learn network programming from programming a a chat app. That project is broken for that learning outcome. If you asked a network expert he would probably suggest to implementthe OSI model as a C library or something like that.

I would also be very cautious about the group aspect of project work. And again, you would need somebody with experience in the field to help you divide the tasks, if you insist on doing group work. Another suggestion would be to do it alone, and get to communal experience into the project in other ways, maybe through reading groups with people doing similar projects.