Welcome to the weekly series “Meet The Champion”.

Last week we spoke to Lubos Kolouch, the winner of Perl Weekly Challenge - 024.

Today we are talking to the Perl Weekly Challenge - 025 winner Yet Ebreo. I hope you are going to enjoy the interview.

Mohammad: Tell us about your technical background?

Yet Ebreo: I started programming when I was 12. My first ever code was written in mIRC scripting language. Back then, I just wanted to do things automatically I didn’t know that I was already “programming”. I graduated college with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics and Communication last 2009. A year after, I started working at a semiconductor company as Test Development Engineer where I used mainly C++ and Perl for data extraction (or just about anything else). Fast forward to this date, I am working as a Test/Product Engineer for an FPGA company still using C++/Perl. During my spare time, I do coding challenges/tournaments in a different site but there are less Perl submissions as compared to Python, JS etc.

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

Yet Ebreo: I never knew about Perl until I got my first job. That was in the year 2010, when I learned about Perl5‘s regex, it felt like I can do any data extraction (and analysis) jobs. I was already amazed with its speed and I haven’t even discovered the plethora of modules in CPAN back then. And as for Perl6, I only learned it when I joined Perl Weekly Challenge.

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

Yet Ebreo: I was looking for a community dedicated for Perl5/Perl6 then I found your blog.

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

Yet Ebreo: I highly value the learning experience. I’ve learned about LZW compression, which I honestly have no interest in learning if not for the challenges, Chaocipher and its history and it also encouraged me to learn Perl6.

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

Yet Ebreo: For the site, easy navigation on the side bar would be nice. A link to the github repo to submit solution should also be placed in the main menu. For the challenges, I hope there is atleast one task with strict constraints to make it more challenging.

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

Yet Ebreo: My rough approximation would be 3 hours per day, so that would be like 21 hours per week.

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

Yet Ebreo: Yes, In fact, I checkout all of them so I have no favourite. I check them because I want to learn different approach and techniques. I think most of them have been using Perl5/6 for longer time than I do.

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

Yet Ebreo: Be curious. Let curiosity be your drive to solve the challenges.

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

Yet Ebreo: Yes! There are room for improvements as always but it is user friendly. I like the Chart and Champions lists.

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

Yet Ebreo: Thanks for putting up this community and the effort to make Perl5/6 popular again by blogging. I hope we could encourage more users to join us.

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