Essential Resources and Documentation for the Plutus Pioneer Program

This blog post will offer the essential resources for you to keep in mind while learning Plutus.

The Plutus Pioneer Program’s structure is worth mentioning before beginning with these resources. In this way, this is an online course offered by IOG and led by Dr. Lars Brünjes, the Director of Education at IOG, which aims to educate developers about Plutus — the core technology that you should master to build DApps on Cardano.

The duration of the third iteration of the Plutus Pioneer course is defined as 10 weeks. Throughout these 10 weeks, a new course was released every Thursday, while a LIVE Q&A was held (via Zoom) each Tuesday.

1. The Canvas

The duration of the third iteration of the Plutus Pioneer course is defined as 10 weeks. Throughout these 10 weeks, a new course was released every Thursday, while a LIVE Q&A was held (via Zoom) each Tuesday.

2. The IOG Academy Youtube Channel

The Plutus Pioneer Program is an open course where each developer can follow all lectures of all the previous program iterations on YouTube. The course comprises a playlist of multiple YouTube Videos divided into a brief introduction, the course section, a brief summary, and finished with the homework.

Each lecture typically lasts for between 1.5 and 2.5 hours.

Find the IOG Academy YouTube Channel here

You must subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications to be notified for every newly-released video.

3. Zoom Live Q&A Session

Every Tuesday, a Live Q&A session was held (via Zoom), lasting for one hour. This hour-long, interactive session was moderated by Lars and the wider IOG Educational team. All Plutus Pioneers could post their questions in the live Zoom chat during such sessions or in the Cardano StackExchange before the call.

The Q&A sessions are not publicly available. This way, participants can be comfortable knowing their questions won’t be shared.

I had an excellent experience with this session; Lars answered almost every question that I asked.

All questions about the course and Plutus were welcome. During the session, all input is valuable, and no question will be looked down on or disqualified. Lars’ warm nature means he is incredibly open to questions, especially considering his outstanding knowledge of Haskell, Functional Programming and, of course, Plutus. Meanwhile, this experience is complemented by his pedagogical skills.

Of course, Lars responds to all questions using his immense knowledge and with detail, using practical examples and references. I also appreciated a lot about Lars; specifically, when he was unsure of something, he sought further support or provided references.

4. Discord Server

The most important source of information, interaction and updates is the “IOG’s Technical Community” Discord Server. Each Plutus Pioneer must join this server and keep an eye on it.

Follow this invitation link to join the discord server.

The “PLUTUS PIONEERS” Section, however, is the most essential for you to track. Below, you will find a description of each channel of that section.

4.1. “ppp-announcements” Channel:

This channel provides announcements about the course’s publishing dates, upcoming Q&A session details, as well as changes to the course plan or other important announcements.

Personally, I kept abreast of changes here; I even turned notifications on for all messages published there. Each message, without a doubt, offers vital information for all Plutus pioneers to follow.

4.2. “pioneers-lounge” Channel:

This channel offers a general discussion about the Plutus Pioneer program.

Throughout my journey, I have accessed this channel regularly to consult on topics related to the Plutus Pioneers community. I have also posted my solutions to the weekly homework and received constructive criticisms for my written code from the community. This iterative process consolidated my learning about each lecture. As a side bonus, it also helped to bridge my knowledge gaps.

4.3. “pioneers-questions” Channel:

In this channel, you can post specific technical questions about the course. The community is extremely reactive, so you will certainly get lots of engagement and help. This aspect was super impressive, confirming the technical side of the Cardano community is perfect.

4.4. “contribute-docs” Channel:

Here, you will find a range of resources and documentation from the Plutus Pioneers community. That way, you can solidify your learning.

A good example is how I used this channel to post my final solutions to the homework after checking them with the community in the “pioneers-lounge” channel, as mentioned,

Also, you will find a ton of other beneficial resources, including all transcripts of the course published by stake_pool.

Jonathan Fishbein posted some excellent notes about Plutus on this channel. Given his expertise, it is worth a read.

Meanwhile, I have come across challenges when setting up my local development environment on my Mac, especially when using nix-shell. This document, a community effort, helped me solve the technical problems with ease.

The above list is not exhaustive, and you will find numerous community contributions which I haven’t mentioned here. With that in mind, I strongly recommend viewing “contribute-docs” channel and checking previously posted resources. Ultimately, this will be a guiding point for you to find other helpful resources.

5. Cardano Stack Exchange:

The Cardano StackExchange is a search engine for all technical questions about Plutus. By bookmarking the Plutus Pioneers Tag, you can follow all Plutus Pioneer related questions and answers.

6. Plutus-Pioneer-Program Github Repository:

It’s recommended for every Plutus Pioneer to bookmark this repository. By doing so, each participant can follow the course content and updates, and track all officially-published IOG homework solutions using actual Plutus code.

In the repository Readme file, the course structure and all direct links to the Plutus Pioneer course on YouTube can be viewed.

Author: Oussama Benmahmoud, CEO of PeakSoft GmbH and Founder of PeakChain,
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