Thanks to a grant from the Perl Foundation, Andrew Shitov is creating A Complete Course of the Raku programming language, the start of which is now available. 

It could had been finished earlier but due to Andrew Shitov, the maker, organizing the PerlCon conference in Rīga, it was postponed for a later date. Fortunately that day has come delivering the first part of the course comprising 91 topics, 73 quizzes and 65 exercises.

Judging from that volume, the final cut is going to be massive!

If you’re only starting to learn Raku, you are advised to go through all the parts in the order they are listed in the table of contents. If you have some practice and you want to have some specific training, you are welcome to start with the desired section.

What's in store for this part, Raku essentials? It opens with a high-level overview and then covers the basics of variables, data types and functions:

Basic introduction to Raku and its compiler 

• What is Raku
• Raku vs. Rakudo
• How to install Rakudo
• Running programs — 1 exercise 

Variables and data types essentials 

• Numbers
• Strings
• Scalar variables
• Boolean type 

Control flow essentials 

• Code blocks
• Conditional checks
• Loops 

More about types 

• Data type conversion
• Typed variables
• Positional data types
• Associative data types 

Functions essentials 

• Creating and calling functions
• More about functions
• Built-in functions for printing
• The MAIN function 

The other four parts under development are: 

• Advanced Raku subjects
• Object-oriented programming in Raku
• Regexes and grammars
• Functional, concurrent, and reactive programming 

Overall, now that Perl 6 has become Raku, it has been set loose to pursue it's own fame and fortune. As such,this course is about of getting to know Raku as well as, later on, diving into its advanced capabilities, all in all covering all the main aspects of the language. The fact that the more advanced topics are not ready yet might be a good thing since you can, without the stress of catching up, just focus on the basics and assimilate them.

The course is text-based and I recommend following along with a good book, and for visual learners another video course to get you quickly up to pace. Check the Related Articles at the bottom of this news piece for those. Andrew has also published quite a few Raku books which you can find here.

More Information

Course of the Raku

Related Articles

The Raku Beginner Tutorial

Think Perl 6

Now Perl 6 Is Raku, Perl 5 Can Be 7

Perl and Raku Both Anticipating Newfound Glory

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