Alexander Kiryuhin has been very busy in the past week. Not only did they release a Comma Complete update (the Raku IDE of choice, now with 2020.02 IntelliJ support). They also released the Rakudo 2020.09 Compiler Release implementing the Raku Programming Language. And Claudio Ramirez made sure there are ready to download Linux packages for that release. And Timo Paulssen made sure there’s an AppImage for it as well!

A Raku Manifesto

After asking a pretty pertinent question on Reddit, Daniel Sockwell continued to produce high-quality thought provoking blog posts. This time, it’s part 1 of a Raku Manifesto, describing what they think the Raku Programming Language is about. Thinking about expressive code vs uniform code, rewarding mastery vs ease of learnability, powerful vs unsurprising code and finally, individual vs large-group productivity. A must read for each Rakoon (/r/rakulang comments)!

AppImagining

Timo Paulssen was unsatisfied by the installation process of MoarPerf (the full Rakudo profiler for MoarVM). Until they found out about AppImage, a format for Linux that allows programs to be distributed as a single executable file. Then packaged MoarPerf and Rakudo in it, and also blogged about it. Can you AppImageine that?

A Universal Interpreter

Wim Vanderbauwhede continues their journey into functional programming with Raku, with two instalments (Twitter comments):

• Encoding types as functions about implementing algebraic data types using roles.
• A universal interpreter with a demonstration using a parsed polynomial expression.

Another round of grant requests

Only a few more days to go to submit your grant proposals to improve the Raku Programming Language for the September 2020 round!

A list of matches

Wenzel P.P. Peppmeyer only wrote one blog post this week: List breaks the chain.

Yet another Pearl

Andrew Shitov wrote another episode in the Pearls of Raku series this week. Issue 13: functional elements and recursive sum.

Weekly Challenge

Weekly Challenge #80 is available for your perusal. And Andrew Shitov did a full review of the Raku solutions of Challenge #78 (including a video run-through).

Core Developments

Most of the core developments have been happening in the new-disp (resume on dispatch related work) and rakuast branches (converting RakuAST trees back to Raku source code, AKA deparsing). Meanwhile, in the main branch:

• Patrick Böker fixed an issue with the -x when running as root and fixed some NQP build dependency issues.
• Nicholas Clark added support for the Sparc64 architecture to MoarVM and fixed a bug in hash resizing.
• Daniel Green improved the performance of the Int.is-prime method: 355x as fast for prime numbers below 2_000_000_000, and down to “only” 2.5x as fast for prime numbers above 10_000_000_000.
• Christian Bartolomäus changed the internal handling of VMnull on the JVM backend and worked on unifying Unicode decoder tests on all backends.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen made sure that the X::Method::Notfound object does not do work on creating suggestions unless that is really necessary, thereby fixing a regression in the Test::Fuzz ecosystem module.
• And some other smaller fixes and improvements.

This week’s new Pull Requests:

• Use GMP instead of libtommath
• Add more tests for streaming decoder and fixes for JVM

Please check them out and leave any comments that you may have!

Questions about Raku

• How would you describe Raku in one sentence? by Daniel Sockwell.
• How to get first max(N,length) elements of an array? by zeekar.
• An interesting case of Seq vs Array by gugod.
• Why can readonly array attributes on a Raku class can be modified? by Julio.
• How do I tell org mode what comment syntax to use? by Enderger.
• Access resources for a different distribution by JJ Merelo.
• How far has Raku progressed in the last 3 years and where is it seeing some usage? /r/rakulang /r/ProgrammingLanguages by vfclists.
• How to get hash keys in order of their appearance by Sergei Suvorov.
• Question about Raku’s type system by lathropd.
• Does anyone know why the TWEAK routine gets hit before the BUILD routine? by Timothy Nelson.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Plug in to delete branches by Alexey Melezhik.
• Close to confusion? by Jarek Rozanski.
• Allowed to look by Andrew Shitov.
• Also referred by Khairul Azrin b Azman.
• A powerful and awesome language byRakulius.
• Joined the Centurion Club by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Future googling ease by Chris Prather.
• Getting ready for HacktoberFest by JJ Merelo.
• A profiler in a bottle by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Part two by Wim Vanderbauwhede.
• Applying for a grant by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• A nice version with react by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Chosen Raku to learn programming by Rakulius.
• Will never come out by 佐藤領.
• Don’t forget! by Rakulius.
• Testing Docker image to grok git: URLs by JJ Merelo.
• Excellent job! by JJ Merelo.
• Ruby like? by Lukas Zapletal.
• Sparrow helper for current git branch by Alexey Melezhik.
• Significantly faster! by Tao Wang Lab UTSW.
• Call for Grant Proposal by JJ Merelo.
• Using the system keychain in Raku by Joelle Maslak.
• Try #rakulang! by Jonathan Stowe.
• That can go now! by Jonathan Stowe.
• A fun conversation by Daniel Lathrop.
• #80 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• Get help for your projects during Hacktoberfest by JJ Merelo.
• ICU – International Components for Unicode by William Michels.
• New type Stash for Block is not a mixin type by Fernando Santagata.
• How to unbuffer $*IN by David Santiago.
• List name and Raku installation options by Parrot Raiser.

Comments about Raku

• A nifty Z operator by jubilatious1.
• Let the Raku team explore the complexity
• Influenced Haskell as well by markstos.
• Dynamic vs static types by Daniel Sockwell.
• Languages without a fifthglyph by xigoi.

New Raku Modules

• Pakku::Spec, Pakku::RecMan::Client, Pakku::Meta by Haytham Elganiny.
• Keyring by Joelle Maslak.
• Timer::Stopwatch by José Joaquín Atria.
• Netstring by Timothy Totten.

Updated Raku Modules

• Tomtit, Sparrow6, Tomtit by Alexey Melezhik.
• JSON::Class, META6, JSON::Marshal by Jonathan Stowe.
• Gnome::N, Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• HTTP::Tinyish, CPAN::Uploader::Tiny, App::Mi6 by Shoichi Kaji.
• XHTML::Writer by Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer.
• Router::Right by Konstantin Narkhov.

Winding down

Quite a busy week again with some thought provoking blog posts! Please don’t forget to stay healthy and to stay safe. Until next week for more news about the Raku Programming Language. Until then!