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2016 - On The Shoulders Of Giants - Damian Conway

The Perl and Raku Conference - Greenville, SC 2026 · talk · Watch on YouTube

Python, Ruby & scripting languagesProgramming language design

What it is

Damian Conway's hour-long keynote at the Perl conference, On the Shoulders of Giants, showing off Perl 6 (Raku) features with history, algorithms and a quantum math operator built with grammars. It is delivered with comic flair.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as an entertaining, technically masterful showcase of what Perl 6 can do.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2021

What HN commenters said

  1. “Watch this instead, it's pretty damn great”

    Better source than Larry Wall on Perl 6

    xaduha, 2016-07 · Strong recommendation · in “Interview with Larry Wall”

  2. “I strongly recommend the full hour. You will not be disappointed.”

    Brilliant, hilarious hour-long Perl 6 keynote

    raiph, 2019-08 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Is Perl 5 or Perl 6 still worth learning in 2019?”

  3. “found it interesting. Always fun to see a modern feature full language collide with history and algorithms.”

    Modern language features meeting history and algorithms

    VLM, 2016-10 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

  4. “there's a nice little presentation by Damian Conway where he crafts an operator for quantum mechanical math”

    Conway crafts a quantum math operator using grammars

    zoffix222, 2016-11 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Why hasn't Perl 6 taken off yet?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: perl 6, raku, damian conway, grammars, programming languages

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