I discovered Damian Conway with Perligata while making researches for my interest in code translation toward other lexical bases. I translated its documentation to Esperanto[1] for the sake of improving my vocabulary, and had some questions he gently answered by email.

Ever since seeing his name on my screen have been a delight, because I know I'm going to have a nice moment reading a bit more of its utterances.

[1] https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Lingua::Romana::Perligata

I have the pleasure of seeing him and Larry present _years_ ago on Perl 6's evolution. Their styles were polar opposites, but the comradery was fun to watch.

I often wonder where we'd be today if Perl 6 had got "finished" 10 years before it did...

Probably with more than a handful of Perl job opportunities nationwide.

Yes, The Damian's brilliance is one of the things I miss most since I stopped using Perl as my goto language.

There's a few other names that I recall of similar influence on me from way back in the "Perl 4 is only reliable way to make websites dynamic" days. Randal Schwartz. Toms Christiansen and Phoenix. Tad McLelland(sp?) Simon Cozens, brian d foy - without hints/examples/advice in comp.lang.perl.misc from them (and others) I 100% wouldn't have ended up where I am today (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is, perhaps, still up for argument...)

Same for his videos/talk.