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 on-demand, interactive learning course created by David Wilson of System Crafters. You will learn how to think like a Scheme programmer through video instruction and demonstrations, directed project work, and discussions in a private area on the System Crafters Forum.

By the end of the course, 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 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 to the course

This course is specifically designed for beginners to Guile Scheme, whether you have some intermediate experience in other languages or if you’re an experienced programmer. It will also be helpful for those who have started experimenting with Guile but still feel like they don’t know how to write Scheme the “right” way.

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!

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.

Once you register for the course, you will immediately get access to 4 chapters of high-quality instructional material both in text and video form. Each chapter contains 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 to internalize the concepts we cover. You will be able to ask questions and discuss the material and exercises with me and the other participants in the private forum group! You can also feel free to share your solutions to get feedback from David and other participants.

Here is an overview of the topics we cover during the course:

• 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 a few 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

Only a few times in my life have I felt like my brain was bulging from trying to hold in new ideas. I mostly write Python professionally, but I’ve already begun incorporating the ideas I’ve learned in this course into my work. I feel like this course has made me a better programmer overall, and I’d probably value it around the cost of a college course, so tons of value for the money in my opinion.

Amol V

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!

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 you can ask questions as you work through the material. Your forum account will also give you access to the course site at System Crafters Guild!

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, feel free to send me an e-mail to ask about it first. If you decide to buy the course and decide it isn’t for you, please e-mail me and we can discuss it.

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!