Hands-On Guile Scheme for Beginners

Scheme is a fascinating programming language with a minimal design that is both easy for beginners to learn and incredibly powerful for advanced users.

Guile Scheme is a practical Scheme implementation with a growing community thanks to projects like GNU Guix, Spritely Goblins, and Guile Hoot. I believe that it is the best language to use for crafting reproducible systems, personal tool hacking, and task automation.

Hands-On Guile Scheme for Beginners is an 8-week, interactive learning course led by David Wilson of System Crafters. You will learn how to think like a Scheme programmer through on-demand video instruction and demonstrations, directed project work, live Q&A sessions, and group discussions in a private area on the System Crafters Forum.

By the end of the 8 weeks, you will have written several projects in Scheme! You will also know enough about Guile to move on to more advanced projects like the ones we will cover in future courses.

• Over 6 hours of self-paced, on-demand video instruction on Scheme fundamentals and practical programming with Guile, broken into easily consumable chunks
• All course videos are accompanied with equivalent written material that expands on the video content in case you would prefer to read!
• 20+ exercises that will reinforce what you learn and lead you on a path to writing practical applications with Scheme
• An encouraging, collaborative group learning environment in a private forum area just for the participants of this iteration
• Personal code review from David Wilson for each of your exercise submissions
• 4 live 1-hour group Q&A sessions (optional) to chat with me, ask questions, and discuss the course content
• A personalized e-book with the course content plus bonus material upon completion of the course
• Lifetime access to the course material and private forum group after the course is complete
• Automatic, free access to updated material when I add improvements for future iterations of the course

This course is specifically designed for beginners to Guile Scheme, but it is also intended for those who have not yet learned to program! If you’ve never written a line of code before, you will be able to start your programming journey here.

I’ve also designed this course to be effective for people who have busy lives and have challenges finding free time in their weekly schedule! The two-week gap between new exercises is intended to give ample time for learning, hacking, discussion, and review.

If you are an intermediate to advanced programmer that has not yet learned Scheme, don’t let the focus on “beginners” discourage you. You will learn a lot about Scheme and how it is different from other programming languages, particularly with a focus on functional programming concepts.

If you already have experience with Scheme and want something more advanced, I am planning a similar course for you! We will cover continuations, writing syntaxes (macros), concurrent programming with Fibers, Guile Hoot, and other topics. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of this page to be notified when these courses are announced.

Every two weeks starting on Saturday, April 20, 2024 you will receive a new “chapter” with high-quality instructional material both in text and video form. Each chapter will contain 10+ sections with material focused on a particular area like Scheme fundamentals, functional programming, and practical programming with Guile.

For each chapter, you will be given a series of exercises to work through over the next 2 weeks. You will be able to ask questions and discuss the material and exercises with me and the other participants in the private forum group throughout those 2 weeks and in the live Q&A session on the Sunday one week after the chapter was released!

If you complete and submit the exercises before the submission deadline (Wednesday of the second week), I will personally review your code and provide helpful feedback on your approach so that you feel confident in what you’ve learned. However, it is not required to submit your exercises, they exist primarily to help you learn Scheme!

The 1-hour live Q&A meetings will generally occur on Sundays at 15:00 UTC one week after the chapter material is released. For this iteration of the course, the live sessions will occur on the following dates, click the link for your local time:

• April 28, 2024
• May 12, 2024
• May 26, 2024
• June 9, 2024

If you can’t make it to one of the live Q&A sessions, don’t worry, these sessions are not mandatory to get the full value of the course! In fact, they will all be recorded so that you can watch them at your leisure. Only other members of this iteration of the course will have access to these live recordings.

Here is an overview of the topics we will cover during the 8 weeks:

• Scheme language fundamentals
• Functional programming for beginners
• Writing loops like a Scheme hacker
• Reading and writing files
• Working with the file system
• Creating your own Guile modules
• Turning Guile code into a complete program
• Processing user input and command line parameters
• Setting up Emacs as a Guile development environment
• Basic interactive development using the REPL
• Interactive program development and debugging with Geiser
• Writing unit tests to develop and test your code
• How to quickly access the Guile manual and documentation in Emacs

You’ll also get a lot of extra bonus material along with the course:

• A glossary of terms related to Scheme, Guile, and functional programming
• A list of fun project ideas that you can try after you finish the course to use what you learned
• A cheat sheet of built-in Guile functions and modules that will be useful for your projects
• A list of useful community Guile libraries that you might want to experiment with
• A list of programs you can configure and extend with Guile

Once you are finished with this course and the bonus material, you will have at least 5 new ideas for cool projects to work on with Guile!

Here is some feedback I received from previous course participants:

I had zero previous experience before taking this course. It has been an immense boost to my confidence and also shown me that it can be done by almost anyone. Totally worth it!

Glenn

I’ve spent plenty on programming courses elsewhere but none were as valuable as this one. David’s teaching style, sense of humor, and patience served us well and made the learning process both challenging and fun. I definitely recommend it to any newcomer wanting to learn Scheme and functional programming.

Mark V

I wanted to learn the fundamentals of functional programming and a bit about the world of Lisp(s), and this was a fantastic course. David is an excellent instructor and did a great job of making the material approachable for everyone and providing feedback. Rewiring my brain for functional programming was fun but still a challenge. Being able to refer back to the videos and having access to the discussion forum are great on-going perks. I highly recommend it!

Shom

If you’re ready to learn Scheme, head over to the System Crafters Store to register or click the blue button below:

Click Here to Register for Hands-On Guile Scheme for Beginners!

There are a limited number of spots available, so make sure to register early if you want to join!

Once you complete registration, you will be sent an e-mail invite to a private area on the System Crafters Forum. This is the place where we will communicate before, during, and after the course.

I am committed to giving you the best possible learning experience with this course! If you are unsure about whether the course is right for you, I am offering a full refund upon request before the end of the first week of the course so that you can give it a fair trial and decide whether you want to continue.

I am confident that you won’t want to ask for a refund, though, because I have packed a ton of information into this course and anyone will learn a lot from it!

If this isn’t a good time for you to join this course, I will run another iteration of it in May!

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