Get to know about Stephen G. Lynn.

Welcome to the monthly series Meet The Champion.

Last month we spoke to Marton Polgar, the winner of July 2022.

Today we are talking to Stephen G. Lynn, the winner of August 2022 of The Weekly Challenge. I hope you are going to enjoy the interview.

Mohammad: Tell us about your technical background?

Stephen: I am a non-CS academic, mostly teaching-focused these days. I have used mostly SAS, R or SPlus, and Matlab or its clones for my academic research in the past.

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

Stephen: I have used Perl regularly since the early 90’s, since before Perl 5 was released. I mostly have used it for data munging or text processing tasks. I started trying out Raku/Perl6 more recently, around a year ago.

Mohammad: How did you come to know about The Weekly Challenge?

Stephen: I think I saw it first on Twitter.

Mohammad: What do you like the most about The Weekly Challenge?

Stephen: I enjoy it a lot. Thanks for coming up with this. I can’t think of any particular feature that I like most, it’s all good.

Mohammad: How much time you dedicate every week to The Weekly Challenge?

Stephen: I could spend more time on it in my summer break, now I have less time unfortunately. Probably I spend around three hours a week on average, though sometimes it could be a lot more.

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

Stephen: Yes, I check out other solutions regularly and even mention them in my blog. I liked Philippe Bricout's regex-based one-liners best.

Mohammad: What do you suggest someone just started The Weekly Challenge?

Stephen: I would suggest that Math::Prime::Util::GMP is their friend for the number-theory challenges.

Mohammad: Anything else you would to like to share with us?

Stephen: Can’t think of anything offhand. Thanks again for the weekly challenge.

That brings the end of the conversation with Stephen G. Lynn. Please do let us know your view. We will come back next month with another champion.