Mohammad S Anwar

Last time we presented you the success story of 3 months. It is now time to share 6 months story with you. I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every contributors. I would also like to take a look what have we achieved in these 6 months.Here is the list of achievements

#1 Active bloggers

I would call this one of the biggest achievements that we have had 228 blogs in the last 6 months. On top this, we have had 11 blogs, as listed below, by Damian Conway. Some of the bloggers started blogging again after long break and some were first timers. You can find all the blogs in the weekly Recaps and Reviews.

Recaps

• Perl Weekly Challenge - 001
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 002
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 003
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 004
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 005
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 006
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 007
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 008
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 009
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 010
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 011
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 012
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 013
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 014
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 015
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 016
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 017
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 018
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 019
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 020
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 021

Perl5 Reviews by Kian-Meng Ang

• Perl Weekly Challenge - 007
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 008
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 009
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 010
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 011
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 012
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 013
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 014
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 015
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 016
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 017
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 018
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 019
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 020
• Perl Weekly Challenge - 021

Perl6 Reviews by Laurent Rosenfeld

• Split Strings on Character Change
• Amicable Numbers
• Five Weekends in a Month
• Wrapping Lines
• Longest Common Substrings
• Priority Queues and Binary Heaps

#2 Cross language participation

There is a general perception that Perl5 oldies don't get along with Perl6 guys. I have noticed few members, recently cross over and tried new language for the first time in the Perl Weekly Challenge. Consistent Perl5 contributors, e.g. Adam Russell, Roger Bell West, recently started contributing Perl6 solutions as well. Similarly Kevin Colyer, who has been Perl6 contributors since he joined the team, has started contributing in Perl5 now. There are many more such crossover. Ideally, I would want everyone to follow the footsteps of members like Joelle Maslak, Laurent Rosenfeld, Ruben Westerberg, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Athanasius etc and contribute equally in Perl5 and Perl6.

#3 Introduction of weekly contest

Thanks to Pete of PerlCareers, we introduced weekly contest during the "Perl Weekly Challenge - 013", where we pick one member randomly from the list of contributors for the week. In return they get $50 Amazon voucher kindly sponsored by PerlCareers. So far we have had 9 champions. You can read short interviews with the champions.

• Laurent Rosenfeld
• Jaldhar H. Vyas
• Joelle Maslak
• Adam Russell
• Yozen Hernandez
• E. Choroba
• Arne Sommer
• Duncan C. White
• Ruben Westerberg

#4 100+ active members

We now have 110 active members. I must confess that I didn't expect it to be so popular that every week I see people around the world request to join the Perl Weekly Challenge. However I would like to see more women participation. Currently we have less than 10% women participation. Ideally I would like to see 50% women participation. Joelle Maslak is leading the women group currently.

#5 Engaging Interactions

We have 170 followers on Twitter. Most of them are very active and engage in meaningful conversations. It is so convenient to share ideas and get instant response. If you are active on Twitter then please do join us and follow @PerlWChallenge. All the latest news and interesting stats shared here first.

#6 Perl Weekly Challenge Club repository

We have 60 contributors who regularly submit solutions as Pull Request. We always encourage members to submit PR. I also noticed, we received 31 stars by the members. It is the most starred repository in my GitHub profile. I have registered a domain perlweeklychallenge.club that will expose the data in the repository in a user friendly manner. I haven't had chance to work on the design yet. Any help would be highly appreciated. Any suggestions? Please do share with us. If you are active on GitHub and would like to follow what is going on then please do watch/star the repository.

#7 Damian Conway's contribution

Damian joined us un-officially and blogs about his solutions to the weekly challenges. I have never seen Damian so actively blogging.

• With friends like these...
• Greed is good, balance is better, beauty is best.
• Chopping substrings
• Six slices of pie
• Vigenère vs Vigenère
• Infinite work is less work
• As simple as possible...but no simpler
• Simplicity made easy
• Coding with an even fuller toolset
• Coding with a full toolset
• Why I love Perl 6

#8 Neil Bowers contribution

Neil Bowers is officially joined the team of Perl Weekly Challenge. Although he is not regular but every now and then when he gets time he does contribute. Few weeks ago, Perl Weekly Challenge - 015, to be precise, there was an optional API task to use Language Detection API. He came up with a dedicated CPAN distributin WebService::DetectLanguage. He didn't stop there and contacted the team at detectlanguage.com and informed them about the new CPAN module. They have now listed Perl as one of the supported languages.

#9 Guest Participation

During the "Perl Weekly Challenge - 018", we have had guest participant, Orestis Zekai, working as a Software Engineer, shared solution in Python. You can find his solution to Task #1 and Task #2. We now have re-structured format slightly to accommodate guest participation. If you know anyone who is keen to participate in the weekly challenge then please do encourage. We value every Guest's participation.

#10 Guest Reviewers

Ever since the challenge started, I was looking for helping hand to review the weekly solutions. First offer came during the "Perl Weekly Challenge - 007" from Kian-Meng Ang to review Perl5 solutions every week. I am grateful to Kian-Meng for doing this without break. Couple of weeks ago, Laurent Rosenfeld offered to review Perl6 solution every week. Not only, he offered to review past week solutions as well. You can find both Perl5 and Perl6 weekly reviews above.

Last but not the least, we are thankful to everyone who participated the Perl Weekly Challenge every week and spread the word. I would also like to thank Mark Keating, Barbie, JJ Merelo, Gabor Szabo for the encouragement. I will come back again in 3 months with more positive news and success stories.