Overview
The Plutus Pioneers Program is a course that teaches software developers how to write smart contracts, programs that run on a blockchain and move funds by fixed rules. Its recorded lectures, code examples, homework, and setup guides sit together in one public repository that anyone can read1. The course is meant for people who already code, not for coding beginners2.
The Plutus Pioneers Program comes from the education team at Input Output, one of the companies behind Cardano. Dr. Lars Brünjes, Input Output's Director of Education3, leads the course4. The repository holds material from the fourth cohort1, the group of students who took the course together starting in February 2023. That cohort ran for ten weeks, with weekly videos, exercises, and Q&A sessions5.
Key Features
- Ten lectures, from setup to a full app. The fourth-cohort lectures start with setting up a coding environment, then cover minting (creating) tokens and NFTs, testing contracts, and building an app for a stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady price, that reads prices from an oracle, an outside data feed1.
- Learn to write contracts in Haskell. The course teaches Plinth, a way to write Cardano smart contracts in the Haskell programming language, which then compiles to Plutus, the code Cardano itself runs6.
- Lecture contract examples in Aiken. A separate version of the course code translates the Plinth examples that run on the blockchain into Aiken, a language built for Cardano smart contracts7.
- A textbook for reading instead of watching. The Plutus Pioneers Program textbook, offered as PDF and Word files, transcribes the video lessons from the first eight weeks of the fourth cohort8.
- A ready-made coding setup. The course setup notes describe a Docker container, a packaged setup with the course libraries preinstalled, so learners can skip installing the tools by hand9.
What to Expect
The fourth-cohort notes say developers with experience in any programming language can start without prior Haskell, and they recommend learning it first10. The course notes point newcomers to a free Haskell Bootcamp from Input Output as preparation11. The fourth cohort asked for about ten hours a week over ten weeks10.
The repository's front page lists the ten lectures with links to their videos on the IOG Academy YouTube channel, and a code folder holds the code for each week1. Past lectures stay on that channel for anyone to watch12. The fourth-cohort course notes directed questions to Cardano Stack Exchange, a public question-and-answer site, under a tag the education team would monitor during the program13.
The recordings come from a scheduled class, so people who work through them later follow the videos and code on their own, without the live Q&A. The Cardano Docs page for the program offers a form to register interest in a future cohort2. The PlutusV3 version of the contracts, a later version of Plutus, includes off-chain code (the part that builds transactions outside the blockchain) for the lessons up to week five6.
