What do I need to do to get paid to Scheme?

Question

I'm a big fan of functional programming in general, Schemes in particular, and PLT-Racket ideally. I am wondering what concrete steps are likely to get me into a position where coding Scheme (or some functional language) is the bulk of the work.

I'm actually quite interested in academia, but on the other hand, I don't feel like I necessarily have what it takes (at least not at the moment) to do a top-tier Ph.D in CS. I definitely would prefer to have some real-world experience putting complex systems together in Scheme either way. Does anyone have any advice for an aspiring Schemer?

Is this question more suited to the programmers stack exchange? — Andrew Grimm, Dec 21 '10 at 06:11
you tell me, dog. I asked it before such a thing existed. Maybe I'll go ask it there, too. — Ben, Jan 07 '11 at 15:26

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 14 '10 at 21:22

16

Start writing some Scheme libraries, then blog about the libraries you've wrote, get noticed in the community.

This will always give you leverage when applying for a position, employers like to have some evidence of what you can do.

edited Jul 14 '10 at 21:22

bakkal

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answered Jul 14 '10 at 21:20

dalton

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score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 15 '10 at 18:58

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dalton has the right idea; you want to build something you can show off. To find out about needs, you could go to http://srfi.schemers.org/, which is an archive of proposals for Scheme libraries and other improvements to Scheme, and see what you think you can contribute to. Or make contact with the Racket team; you may be able to contribute to Racket directly.

edited Jul 15 '10 at 18:58

Justin Ethier

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answered Jul 15 '10 at 00:23

Norman Ramsey

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This is a great idea- the PLT cats are pretty accessible and genuinely nice people. – Ben Jul 15 '10 at 16:38

Dak · Answer 3 · 2010-07-18T14:28:28.740

If you want to leverage something popular and in the news: App Inventor is based on Google Blocks, which are in turn based on Kawa, which is a Scheme dialect [*].

If you can show off your skills by putting together blocks and making them available for the community...it's a natural way to take advantage both of your multi-language skills and something currently getting press coverage.

Regards, Dak [*] and I forgot to say that earlier, mea culpa!

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 07 '14 at 18:48

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Not going to accept my own answer because it is, in general, worse than the one @dalton gave, but!

I got a grant through Turbulence.org to write an art and thus was paid to scheme! Or racket, if you want to be a pedant. repo here...

answered Apr 07 '14 at 18:48

Ben

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 15 '10 at 09:48

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F# is getting popular in the finance sector:

http://cs.hubfs.net/forums/thread/16004.aspx

answered Jul 15 '10 at 09:48

Mau

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What do I need to do to get paid to Scheme?

5 Answers5