Mark Gardner

CORE

Houston, US

Joined Mar 2021

https://phoenixtrap.com

About

Certified full-stack web developer and back-end software engineer with 16+ years of Perl experience. Proficient in multiple programming languages, databases, DevOps, and CI/CD. Passionate about collaborative problem-solving and quickly realizing impactful results from grasping new technologies.

Education

Education

Independence University · Computer Science

Bachelor of Science

Jul 2014 - May 2017

Stats

Reputation:	1912
Pageviews:	197.2K
Articles:	13
Comments:	1

Expertise

Open Source

Articles
Comments

Articles

Porting From Perl to Go: Simplifying for Platform Engineering

Rewriting a script for the Homebrew package manager taught me how the Go programming language’s design choices align with platform-ready tools.

October 16, 2025

· 3,699 Views · 2 Likes

Perl List Processing Is for Hashes, Too

Perl’s list-processing prowess isn’t just for arrays. Hashes, or key-value pairs, can be sliced and diced through built-in and extended functions.

February 10, 2022

· 2,377 Views · 4 Likes

Get Out Early With Perl Statement Modifiers

Learn how to avoid deeply-nested conditions in your code with guard clauses using Perl’s statement modifiers.

January 20, 2022

· 2,445 Views · 4 Likes

Perl Warnings and the Warn Function

This article explains the difference between Perl’s warnings and the warn function. Read on to find out the difference and use the code to fix your issues!

January 4, 2022

· 2,071 Views · 4 Likes

A Brief Note on Log4perl

The Perl Log::Log4perl library isn’t vulnerable to the recent Java Log4j “Log4Shell” security issue. Consider using it in addition to regular debugging.

December 14, 2021

· 3,731 Views · 5 Likes

The Reports of Perl’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It’s OK to not like the Perl programming language, but it’s not dead or dying. Here’s what’s going on with its development and its community.

October 19, 2021

· 3,843 Views · 5 Likes

Fast Perl Module Installation With CPM

Installing Perl dependencies slowing you down? In this article, check out CPM, a CPAN client built for parallelism and speed.

September 28, 2021

· 2,033 Views · 4 Likes

Everyone's a (Perl) Critic, and You Can Be Too!

Learn the basics of perlcritic, a tool for code readability, security, and bug prevention.

September 21, 2021

· 2,724 Views · 4 Likes

A Good Old-Fashioned Perl Log Analyzer

AWK is great, but what happens when you need to move a bit beyond? Here I present a short Perl script for analyzing web server logs.

Updated September 15, 2021

· 10,825 Views · 4 Likes

Taming the Moose: Method Modifiers Instead of Overrides in Object-Oriented Perl

Using the override function may seem like the obvious choice when overriding a superclass’s method in the Perl Moose object-oriented framework. There may be a better way, though: method modifiers.

August 31, 2021

· 1,894 Views · 4 Likes

Perl and Raku: Best Frenemies

Let’s look past Perl and Raku’s complicated history. What’s it like to port a program from one to the other and use Perl modules from Raku?

Updated August 19, 2021

· 6,570 Views · 6 Likes

What’s Next for Object-Oriented Perl?

A peek into the future of object-oriented Perl courtesy of the Object::Pad module.

August 3, 2021

· 2,247 Views · 4 Likes

Building a Microservice in Perl (Part 1): Designing the API

A brief description of microservices, then jumping into defining one with OpenAPI.

Updated March 2, 2021

· 4,465 Views · 6 Likes

Comments

The Reports of Perl’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Jan 14, 2022 · Mark Gardner

Perl 6 was renamed to Raku in 2019. It’s a different language, and although I’ve written about integrating it with Perl (here and here), it hasn’t been my focus.

There is a great list of resources on learning Raku on the official site.