== March Meeting ==
==== March 8th, 6:30pm at Free Geek, 1741 SE 10th Ave   ====

Topic: The Guts of Perl (and why you should care)

[Slides http://scratchcomputing.com/developers/perl_guts_tour.html]

[Podcast http://pdxpm.podasp.com/archive.html?pname=meetings.xml]

Presenter: Eric Wilhelm

Briefly covering:

(roughly) What the perl interpreter does when you throw a program at it.
How perlguts and compiled extensions work. How to peek into perl internals
with Perl code. How this knowledge is useful.

Agenda:

* (requisite viewing of fluff / late arrivals)
* Overview of perl's parse, compile, run process.
* Possibly some mildly off-topic bits about XS, perlapi, etc.
* Tour of the B:: modules.
* (heckling)
* Comparisons between B and PPI approaches.
* (likely more heckling)
* Example code, case studies, and esoteric observations.
* (beer at the LuckyLab)

Applications:

* Mechanically analyzing readability and refactorability of Perl code.
* Design patterns and optimization insights.
* Better understanding of what is under the hood.
* An opportunity to heckle me (heckling-based learning optional.)
