Meet The Champion: Perl Weekly Challenge - 019

Wednesday, Aug 7, 2019| Tags: Perl, Raku


Welcome to the weekly series “Meet The Champion”.

Last week we spoke to E. Choroba, the winner of Perl Weekly Challenge - 018. Today we are talking to the Perl Weekly Challenge - 019 winner Arne Sommer. I hope you are going to enjoy the interview.



Mohammad: Tell us about your technical background?

Arne: I started programming in about 1982, when I bought an Atari 400 computer. I enjoyed programming so much that I made a career of it. I have a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Oslo in Norway.


Mohammad: How/When did you start using Perl/Raku?

Arne: I actually started with Perl 3 in 1989. I wrote a lot of shell scripts in my early days at the University, but was frustrated by the syntax. Perl stood out as the prefect scripting “glue language”, and I was hooked. I still am.

I moved to Perl 5 in 1994, and started programming Perl 6 in 2015. I still do Perl 5 stuff, but prefer Perl 6 for new projects.


Mohammad: How did you come to know about “Perl Weekly Challenge”?

Arne: The excellent Perl 6 Weekly (https://p6weekly.wordpress.com/) after the first challenge. (So I missed that first one.)


Mohammad: What do you like the most about “Perl Weekly Challenge”?

Arne: The varying difficulties of the challenges. This isn’t always obvious by just reading the text, so there is an element of discovery here.


Mohammad: Is there any thing you would like to change?

Arne: Not really.


Mohammad: How much time you dedicate every week to “Perl Weekly Challenge”?

Arne: I just start by reading the new challenge each Monday morning, and takes it from there. Some weeks I do spend too much time on it, but I enjoy it too much…


Mohammad: Do you checkout others solutions and who is your favourite?

Arne: I read most of the Perl 6 blogs. It is nice to see other solutions that are similar to what I have done, and it is nice to see solutions that differ. I still have a lot to learn about Perl 6, and this is an excellent way of doing it.

I don’t really have any favourite, except Damian. But he is in a class of his own.


Mohammad: What do you suggest someone just started the weekly challenge?

Arne: Just go for it.


Mohammad: Do you find the website user friendly? What do you like most?

Arne: The menus are missing when used on a mobile phone. The site structure can become a pain when the number of articles increses, but this can be fixed by adding a new page with links to all the challenges, solutions, recaps and interviews. It would make for a nice table.

I particularly like the Weekly Reviews. Both of them. Getting different points of view is great.


Mohammad: Anything else you would like share with us?

Arne: I am impressed that you have managed to keep it up this long. I started my Perl 6 blog (at https://perl6.eu) before reading about the Perl Weekly Challenge, and would have run out of topics for my weekly blogs a long time ago if it hadn’t been for the challenges.

But I am also a little concerned, as I fear that I may have become addicted to the challenges :-)



That brings the end of the conversation with Arne Sommer. Please do let us know your view. We will come back next week with another champion.



SO WHAT DO YOU THINK ?

If you have any suggestions or ideas then please do share with us.

Contact with me