Stefan Seifert resumed working on RakuAST. And how! In a matter of just over a week, not only did we cross the 1024 boundary of number of “spectest” files completely passing, we also crossed the 75% boundary. Cool stuff!

Rakudo Compiler Release

Justin DeVuyst (kudos, yet again!) has produced the third Rakudo compiler release of 2024: 2024.03, mostly about stability and efficiency. Binary packages have become available shortly after, as well as updates to Rakudo Star.

Viva Las Vegas

Conference Talks submission is open for the conference in Las Vegas on June 25-27 2024!

Raku on Exercism

In the presentation of the “Luhn” exercise solutions, the Raku Programming Language solution by rcmlz gets extensive exposure: “a condensed solution, as we expect“. And the day before that, the “Sieve” exercise also got quite some attention: “looks a little like Erlang“!

Patrick’s Corner

Patrick Böker explains the use of wrapper scripts, and how it is hard to get them right. But with the right tools, it can be much simpler. In “Better wrapper scripts“.

Paul’s Corner

Paul Cochrane expressed their surprise about the (im)possibility of being able to run scripts on Windows in “Letting mere mortals run Windows PowerShell scripts” (/r/rakulang, /c/rakulang comments).

Anton’s Corner

In the past two weeks, Anton Antonov has been very active again:

• Omni-slurping with LLMing (/r/rakulang comments)
• Wisdom of “Integrating Large Language Models with Raku” (/r/rakulang comments)
• Propaganda in “Integrating Large Language Models with Raku” (/r/rakulang, /c/rakulang comments)

Dr. Raku’s Corner

Dr Raku continued producing and posting beginner tutorial videos:

• For Loop Array Technique
• Learn While Loops
• Array Range
• Create File Using User Input
• Check Elements In Array Program
• Protected Directory Project

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #263 and #264 are available for your perusal.

New Pull Requests

• Convert uses of if nqp::getcomp('Raku').backend.name eq <...> to #?if <...>
• Add dispatch disambiguation via is item parameter trait

Core Developments

• Daniel Green tweaked the int to str cache on MoarVM, causing 42K fewer coercions during the Rakudo build. They also made the JVM build about twice as fast by integrating the fastutil library in NQP and fixed any inadvertent breakages on the JVM backend caused by the Metamodel work by:
• Elizabeth Mattijsen added a rudimentary dd debugging subroutine in NQP, and continued working on the Metamodel classes for faster compilation and performance and better stability.
• Stefan Seifert improved the error handling of “method not found” errors, easing debugging of core development work significantly.
• And a number of additional tweaks and fixes.

In RakuAST developments this week:

• Stefan Seifert whirlwinded back with many additions and fixes to RakuAST!
• The number of passing test-files with the new Raku grammar are now 139/151 (make test +0) and 1028/1356 (make spectest +35).

Meanwhile on Mastodon

• Not the most exciting solution by Julia.
• Susprising by Paul Cochrane.
• Absolutely brilliant by Mitarashi Dango.
• Shuffle and Deal by Massa Humberto.
• Short and sweet by Julia.
• Accidentally solved? by Julia.
• The first part is tricky by Julia.
• Not remotely as awesome by Samuel Chase.

Meanwhile still on Twitter 𝕏

• Like Cro but by mennof.
• Numerators and Denominators by Winnfred Raj.

Questions about Raku

• Cannot use OUTER as label name for loop control by AlvaPan.
• How can I dynamically export classes? by Steve Roe.
• Breaking brace after the start keyword by fingolfin.

Comments

• Its own spinoff world by classichasclass.
• Look at the Raku implementation, then simplify design by ait.
• OpenBSD support! by busy_falling.
• On OSU eCampus Computer Science Program by HSNubz.
• Neither man or boy by Ralph Mellor.
• Appreciating the % operator by Hillel Wayne.
• Might be more undervalued by toastal.
• Paradigm heavy by forgotpwd16.

New Raku Modules

• JSON::GLib::Node “Library bindings for GNOME’s JSON-GLib library” by Clifton Wood.
• Cro-HTTP-Middleware-GoatCounter “Middleware to feed requests to GoatCounter” by Patrick Böker.

Updated Raku Modules

• Data::Importers, LLM::Prompts, Data::Translators, Data::Importers, WWW::Gemini by Anton Antonov.
• YAMLScript by Ingy døt Net.
• GLib by Clifton Wood.
• App::Mi6 by Shoichi Kaji.
• Mi6::Helper, Text::Utils, Abbreviations by Tom Browder.
• Ethelia, Node::Ethereum::KeyStore::V3 by Konstantin Narkhov.
• PublicSuffix by JJ Atria.
• Terminal::Widgets by Geoffrey Broadwell.
• MoarVM::Remote, Zef::Configuration by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• SSH::LibSSH::Tunnel by Humberto Massa.
• Config::DataLang::Refine, Gnome::Gio, Gnome::Glib, Gnome::GObject, Gnome::N, Gnome::Cairo, Gnome::Gdk3, Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.

Winding down

As some of you have noticed, there was no Rakudo Weekly news last week. It somehow felt inappropriate to publish on April Fool’s Day. So yours truly took a week off. Normal weekly publishing has resumed! Meanwhile, Слава Україні!  Героям слава!

Please keep staying safe and healthy, and keep up the good work!

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