What I learned from being an editor/reviewer for the 2025 Perl Advent Calendar

Source: Dev.to

Background

In 2024 I took the plunge and submitted my first contribution to that year’s Perl Advent Calendar. The calendar has been organized for several years by Olaf Alders, a member of the Toronto Perl Mongers (TPM). I wrote about a solution to a challenge I encountered at work, presenting it as a simple application of Perl. While any popular scripting language could have been used, Perl has been my go‑to tool since retraining as a bioinformatician in 2008 (I was originally a biochemist). The post described how to create phylogenetic trees for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) sequences from patients.

Volunteering as a Reviewer for the 2025 Calendar

For the 2025 calendar I had a few ideas but lacked the confidence to write a new blog post, so I volunteered to review submissions after Olaf mentioned he could use extra hands. I had little idea what the role would entail, but I was eager to learn.

Advent lasts 24 days, and I ended up reviewing five articles. For each draft I had to teach myself about a CPAN module that the author was discussing. The subject matter of all the drafts was outside my area of expertise and comfort zone. As an occasional reader of Perl articles, I realized I might have skipped these posts unless the author were a well‑known Perl celebrity.

The Review Process

Diving deep into each topic, I read up on the relevant Perl modules and understood the specific “itch” the code was meant to scratch. Each review turned into a mini‑tutorial that expanded my horizons and proved stimulating.

My main goal was to grasp the gist of each post and verify that the code examples ran as advertised. This often required:

• Installing a new Perl module and all of its dependencies.
• Installing non‑Perl applications when required.

During this process I discovered that I had unintentionally created a “mixed” installation of different Perl versions on my MacBook Pro. My new friend, Claude AI, helped diagnose and clean up those glitches.

Lessons Learned

• Reviewing forced me to learn new CPAN modules and broaden my technical knowledge.
• Running the authors’ code highlighted the importance of clean environment management.
• The experience reinforced the value of community‑driven learning and peer feedback.

Looking Forward

I look forward to serving as an editor/reviewer for future Perl Advent Calendars if needed. Since helping with the 2025 calendar, I have renewed my interest in participating in The Perl Weekly Challenge, another fun community coding activity. From my perspective, writing that first blog post in 2024 was the “gateway drug” that opened the door to learning more Perl‑ish things.