Everything about this thread is wonderful. Rasagy Sharma and Arun Ganesh run a digital cartography module at National Institute of Design, Bangalore and this repository contains all their course materials and resources. What is even better is that student discussions and assignments are also public! You can see progress being made and iterations happen. The other 'Issues' on the repo are also worth strolling through.
As someone who restricts themselves to 'available' shapefiles for work and doesn't really map from scratch, this is really educational for me too.
