Welcome to the weekly series “Meet The Champion”.

Last week we spoke to Colin Crain, the winner of Perl Weekly Challenge - 039.

Today we are talking to the Perl Weekly Challenge - 040 winner Noud Aldenhoven. I hope you are going to enjoy the interview.

Mohammad: Tell us about your technical background?

Noud: Starting from a young age I’ve always been interested in Science and Technology. I have a degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Mathematical Physics. At this moment I’m working as data scientist at Nutreco, an international company that created Animal Nutrition and Aquafeed. My specialization is understanding, investigating, optimizing and improving (complex) pipelines in companies. Let’s say I’m just good with numbers.

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

Noud: I started learning Raku when I joined Perl Weekly Challenge. Ofcourse, I had quite a lot of experience in a dozen of other languages, so it didn’t take long to learn the basics of Raku. What I like about Raku is that the language doesn’t force you to program in a certain way. Functional programming? Here you have your lambda functions and lazy lists. Object-Oriented? Sure, Raku has Classes. Metaprogramming? No problem, why not? Did you know that Raku supports logical programming as well? Unlike many other languages, such as Python, there is not one “best” way to solve a problem in Raku.

Unfortunately I’m not using Raku at work. Therefore, the challenges of Perl Weekly Challenge are exactly the thing I needed to continue practicing Raku.

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

Noud: I saw Perl Weekly Challenge first popping up on ycombinator’s hacker news.

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

Noud: I like the accessible setup. It’s easy to make contributions and, most of the time, it doesn’t take me too long to solve the weekly challenges. Also I like the weekly reviews of Laurent Rosenfeld and Kian-Meng Ang. Laurent Rosenfeld does a great job reviewing the solutions of the participant and giving an overview of all possible ways a problem could be solved.

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

Noud: Depends a bit on the time I have every week and how difficult the challenges are. I think most challenges are solved in 1 to 2 Friday evening hours.

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

Noud: YES! But I don’t have a particular favourite. I always read the review of Laurent Rosenfield. I think I learned more Raku from other peoples solutions in the review than from my own solutions.

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

Noud: Practice makes perfect. Being consistent will make you a little bit better every week. Try to solve one or two tasks every week. If you do this long enough you become the master.

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

Noud: Perl Weekly Challenge is one of the best initiatives I’ve seen in years. Keep up the good work and happy new year!

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