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Photo: Stian Kristoffersen; Editing: Salve J. Nilsen. In picture, from left: Paul Johnson, Stig Palmquist, Leon Timmermans, Robert Rothenberg, Salve J. Nilsen, Timothy Legge, and Olaf Alders. CPAN Security Group (CPANSec) and The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) are happy to announce the April Task Force. This project is set up to strengthen the CPANSec CNA Function, improve the security posture of…
In my previous article I introduced Podlite as a block-based markup language. Today I'll zoom into one piece: tables. I write tables in three rough shapes: a few rows of words I'm jotting down, a visual grid like a tic-tac-toe board, or a data export I want to embed in a document. Podlite has three syntaxes around the same model, one per shape. The first has several flavors, so let's start with…
From April 23-26, 2026, the invite-only Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS) brought together about 30 of the ecosystem’s most active maintainers — including four first-timers — in Vienna, Austria for four days of uninterrupted deep-dive collaboration in pair-programming sessions, consensus discussions, and critical infrastructure work. Attendees tackled security tooling and infrastructure, modernization…
Let's Make a Drum Machine application! Yeah! :D There are basically two important things to handle: A MIDI "clock" and a groove to play. Why asynchronous? Well, a simple while (1) { Time::HiRes::sleep($interval); ... } will not do because the time between ticks will fluctuate, often dramatically. IO::Async::Timer::Periodic is a great timer for this purpose. Its default scheduler uses system time,…
Let's talk about music programming! There are a million aspects to this subject, but today, we'll touch on generating rhythmic patterns with mathematical and combinatorial techniques. These include the generation of partitions, necklaces, and Euclidean patterns. Stefan and J. Richard Hollos wrote an excellent little book called "Creating Rhythms" that has been turned into C, Perl, and Python . It…
2025 was a tough year for The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF). Funds were sorely needed. The community grants program had been paused due to budget constraints and we were in danger of needing to pause the Perl 5 core maintenance grants. Fastmail stepped up with a USD 10,000 donation and helped TPRF to continue to support Perl 5 core maintenance. Ricardo Signes explains why Fastmail helped keep…
"Perl is my cast-iron pan - reliable, versatile, durable, and continues to be ever so useful." TPRC 2026 brings together a community that embodies all of these qualities, and we're looking for sponsors to help make this special gathering possible. About the Conference The Perl and Raku Conference 2026 is a community-organized gathering of developers, enthusiasts, and industry professionals. It…
My name is Alex. Over the last years I’ve implemented several versions of the Raku's documentation format (Synopsys 26 / Raku's Pod) in Perl and JavaScript. At an early stage, I shared the idea of creating a lightweight version of Raku's Pod, with Damian Conway, the original author of the Synopsys 26 Documentation specification (S26). He was supportive of the concept and offered several valuable…
Announcing the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026! The organizers have been working behind the scenes since last September, and today I'm happy to announce that the 16th Perl Toolchain Summit will be held in Vienna, Austria, from Thursday April 23rd till Sunday April 26th, 2026. This post is brought to you by Simplelists , a group email and mailing list service provider, and a recurring sponsor of the…
For the second consecutive year, The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) is overjoyed to announce a donation of USD 25,000 from DuckDuckGo . DuckDuckGo has demonstrated how Perl and its ecosystem can deliver power and scale to drive the DuckDuckGo core systems, plug-in framework and Instant Answers. The Foundation is grateful that DuckDuckGo recognises the importance of Perl, and for their generous…
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