Originally published at Perl Weekly 736
Hi there,
The association of the weekly newsletter with NICEPERL goes back much further than mine.
Right from its tagline, "where we turn Perl inside out", the blog signals its mission: to dive deep into the Perl language and its ecosystem with a hands-on, exploratory spirit.
It covers notable updates and insightful commentary on CPAN modules and Perl tools.
There’s a balance of careful maintenance, practical technical insights and well-curated community news. By consistently showcasing noteworthy CPAN modules and pairing that with a personal, open-source-driven perspective, it provides steady, meaningful value, quietly but effectively.
In a world awash with generic tech content, efforts like NICEPERL stand out for their depth and specificity. For Perl professionals, whether you're tracking tools, following community trends or just curious about the latest CPAN releases, NICEPERL remains a reliable and worthwhile resource.
Do you remember, What is new on CPAN? series on perl.com? Unfortunately, the last post in the series was in January 2025. Hopefully, it makes a comeback soon, I would love to see it return as a regular feature.
Enjoy rest of the newsletter.
--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.
Announcements
My Guilty Perl Obsession
The article beautifully captures what many in open-source communities know but sometimes forget: that our everyday tools represent labor and generosity. Bryan's earnest confession and commitment to reciprocate stands out as both humble and inspiring, a timely reminder that supporting the communities behind our tools is not just benevolent, but essential.
OpenAPI::Client::OpenAI
The changes appear well-considered and address several common developer pain points while positioning the platform for more sophisticated use cases.
Call for Papers & Participation - Perl Community Conference, Winter 2025
The Winter 2025 Perl Community Conference is a hybrid in-person and online event.
Articles
Testing a Perl Mojolicious web app
The post is a practical, hands-on tutorial demonstrating how to write tests for a web application built with the Mojolicious framework in Perl. It's aimed at developers who are familiar with the basics of Mojolicious and want to implement a test-driven development (TDD) workflow or simply add tests to their application.
Even lighter Perl modulinos with Util::H2O::More
This post is an advanced, in-depth tutorial that tackles a sophisticated Perl software design pattern: the Modulino. It explains how to transform a standalone script into a module-like entity that is both runnable directly and testable by external programs.
Scraping the Dragon with Perl and Mojolicious
The Weekly Challenge
The Weekly Challenge by Mohammad Sajid Anwar will help you step out of your comfort-zone. You can even win prize money of $50 by participating in the weekly challenge. We pick one champion at the end of the month from among all of the contributors during the month, thanks to the sponsor Lance Wicks.
The Weekly Challenge - 337
Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Smaller Than Current" and "Odd Matrix". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.
RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 336
Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Equal Group" and "Final Score" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.
TWC336
Excellent solutions. They are concise, efficient and demonstrate a strong command of Perl idioms and core modules. The logic is clear and directly addresses the problem requirements.
Equally Final
This is an excellent, intermediate-to-advanced level post that effectively showcases Raku's unique approach to OOP. It is well-structured, using clear, practical examples to demonstrate the "what," "why" and "how" of these features.
Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 336
The post delivers a clean and approachable presentation of both challenges—with clear problem statements, illustrative examples and step-by-step solutions. Each task is broken down intuitively, making it accessible to both new and seasoned Perl programmers.
Finally Equal
This post is a fantastic and highly practical walkthrough of solving the task. It excels not just in providing solutions but in demonstrating a thought process and the iterative refinement of code.
Perl Weekly Challenge 336
Both solutions are clear, concise, and idiomatic, demonstrating solid problem-solving skills and effective use of Perl features. They balance simplicity with robustness and are well supported by examples.
Equal Groups and Final Scores
Both solutions are clear, idiomatic and well-structured, with code that directly reflects the problem description.
The Score for Group Therapy
This is a high-quality technical blog post that demonstrates excellent programming skills across multiple languages. It shows deep understanding of each language's unique features and idioms while maintaining consistent logic across implementations. The explanations are clear and the code is well-structured and readable.
Grouping and scoring
Solutions are more mathematically elegant, while they are more explicit about verifying the actual grouping conditions. Both approaches have merit depending on the specific requirements!
The Weekly Challenge #336
Solutions are generally preferable for their clarity and efficiency, while Robbie's demonstrate alternative approaches with more defensive programming. The mathematical insight that GCD > 1 ⇔ all frequencies divisible by smallest frequency > 1 is particularly interesting!
In the Final Reckoning, We're All Equal
The approaches are clean, readable and effective, though you could acknowledge the efficiency of a GCD-based shortcut for Task 1 or bolster Task 2 with safeguards (like guarding against empty-stack operations) to strengthen robustness.
Equalling the score
The post delivers a clear, idiomatic Python and Perl solution that elegantly operationalises the stack-based scoring logic, complete with thorough error handling for invalid inputs. The structured walkthrough from leveraging GitHub Copilot to reinforcing robustness with exceptions—results in both readable and resilient code.
Rakudo
2025.34 Computationally Irreducible
The title, "Computationally Irreducible", is a playful and clever reference to a core theme of the week: complex problems that can't be easily simplified or predicted without actually running the code.
Weekly collections
NICEPERL's lists
Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.
The corner of Gabor
A couple of entries sneaked in by Gabor.
Why do Python programmers hate Perl?
Events
Boston.pm - online - monthly meeting
September 9, 2025
Paris.pm - Michelangelo - monthly meeting
September 10, 2025
Toronto.pm - online - Lightning Talks 2025
September 25, 2025
Toronto.pm - online - How SUSE is using Perl
December 6, 2025
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(C) Copyright Gabor Szabo
The articles are copyright the respective authors.
Top comments (1)
Spot on—NICEPERL is the camel's compass: deep, precise, and quietly reliable. Thanks for the sharp curation—here's to a “What's New on CPAN?” revival!