Going from Python to Guile Scheme - a natural progression

Python is the first language I loved. I dreamt in Python, I planned in Python, I thought I would never need anything else.

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 - Softcover: 14.95 €
   with pdf, epub, mobi
 - Source: download
   free licensed under GPL

Update 2025: I published the libre book Naming & Logic: programming essentials with Scheme, a quick start into Guile Scheme. It gets you from your first define to deploying your application, either as a server, or as web assembly, or as binaries. Thanks to the minimalism of Scheme, it just needs 64 DinA6 pages while teaching programming with the best practices I found in a decade of using Guile Scheme.

I will show you why I love Python

Python is a language where I can teach a handful of APIs and cause people to learn most of the language as a whole. — Raymond Hettinger (2011-06-20)

• Pseudocode which runs
• One way to do it
• Hackable
• Batteries and Bindings
• Scales up

Where I hit its limits

Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. — Bilbo Baggins in “The Lord of the Rings”

• Dual Syntax: What we teach new users is no longer what we use
• Ceremony crops in
• Complexity is on the rise

And how I lost its shackles

You must unlearn what you have learned. — Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back“

• Guile Scheme compared to the strengths of Python
• Guile Scheme shortcomings
• Guile beyond Python

Guile Scheme is the official GNU extension language, used for example in GNU Cash and GNU Guix and the awesome Lilypond.

Accompany me on a path beyond Python

Every sufficiently complex appli­ca­tion/langu­age/tool will either have to use Lisp or reinvent it the hard way. — Greenspuns 10th rule

• Buy the softcover: 14.95 € (includes the ebook)
• Read for free: html | pdf
• Download the source: from Sourcehut

As free cultural work, py2guile is licensed under the GPLv3 or later. You are free to share, change, remix and even to resell it as long as you say that it’s from me (attribution) and provide the whole corresponding source under the GPL (sharealike).

For instructions on building the ebook yourself, see the README in the source.

Happy Hacking!

— Arne Babenhauserheide