Zoffix Znet wrote the first of the Rakudo Perl 6 Advent posts and hit the Jackpot on Hacker News. Mischief achieved indeed! The Grinch would be so proud! And then there were also some Reddit comments.

Other Rakudo Perl 6 Advent posts so far:

Squashathon

Last weekend saw yet another Squashathon (yes, there is one on every first Saturday of the month). The goal of this squashathon was to go through tickets that were not updated in two or more years (these tickets are automatically labeled with MOLD tag). As a result, 121 out of 224 tickets (more than half) were updated. Most of the updates were simply about reproducing the issue with the current version of Rakudo Perl 6, but some tickets got more attention and received tests and fixes. A fuller overview of all Squashatons is also available. Kudos to Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev for organizing and everybody else for participating!

Other Blog Posts

Core Developments

Jonathan Worthington enabled inlining on a number of exception related constructs, that were previously barred from being inlined. This resulted in the test-t canary code to run about 12% faster. And it shaved off about 12 seconds off of make spectest for yours truly. I must say this bodes well for future inlinings!

enabled inlining on a number of exception related constructs, that were previously barred from being inlined. This resulted in the canary code to run about 12% faster. And it shaved off about 12 seconds off of for yours truly. I must say this bodes well for future inlinings! Samantha McVey fixed a problem with the Unicode database that showed up in the handling of the character class.

fixed a problem with the Unicode database that showed up in the handling of the character class. Timo Paulssen made the setup of a multi-needle split a lot cheaper for up to 20% speed improvement.

made the setup of a multi-needle a lot cheaper for up to 20% speed improvement. Elizabeth Mattijsen fixed :exists on Telemetry objects, as well as several mouldy old tickets.

fixed on objects, as well as several mouldy old tickets. And some more smaller fixes and improvements.

Meanwhile on FaceBook

Peter Evans :

Since last year we had some issues with WordPress messing up code examples in Perl 6 Advent articles, Zoffix hacked up a little helper tool: You write your Advent article in Markdown, run the tool, and out it spits WordPress-friendly HTML. It does syntax highlights too, which is pretty sweet.

: Andrew Shitov:

The funny thing I learned today is that the atom character can also be italic 😀 (well, probably just slanted, not proper italic)

Meanwhile on Twitter

Meanwhile on StackOverflow

Meanwhile on perl6-users

p6 for w32 by Todd Chester.

Winding Down

Yours truly spent most of the past week on the road, and recovering from a bad cold, and a bumpy overnight ferry. On the plus side, it was good to get out and see new stuff and meet old friends in faraway places. A bit like Rakudo Perl 6 and Pumpking Perl 5 really. See you next week for more Rakudo Perl 6 news!