= Hands on Perl 6 =

  Wed. October 8th, 6:53pm at FreeGeek -- 1731 SE 10th Ave.

Come join us for a hands-on session of learning to use Perl 6 and running rakudo.

Jerry Gay of [http://www.rakudoconsulting.com/ Rakudo Consulting Group] will be visiting from Seattle.  Jerry is a key contributor to parrot/rakudo and will be very helpful in understanding what rakudo can do right now and diagnosing any troubles that come up.

We will begin with a quick overview by Jerry and take a few minutes to answer any pressing questions.  Then we break into pairs or small groups and *write code*!

Lots of people will be available to answer questions, and there may be some reading involved.  Whether you want to explore the new OO system and other language features or just want to get a feel for how common tasks would be done in Perl 6 is up to you.

= Preparation =

If you can bring a computer, please try to have a running Perl 6 /before/ the meeting so we can avoid getting bogged down in setup issues or derailed by network failure.  Feel free to ask for help on the MailingList or in [irc://irc.perl.org/#pdx.pm the irc channel].

If you have a fairly well-equipped development system with Perl 5 and a C compiler, you should have no problems compiling from the svn:

  svn co https://svn.perl.org/parrot/trunk parrot
  cd parrot
  perl Configure.pl
  make perl6

[http://www.parrotcode.org/source.html
Downloadable Binaries] are also available for many systems (including windows and darwin.)  It would be best to compile the latest code from svn, but the important thing is to *run* Perl 6.

If you cannot bring a computer, please contact EricWilhelm (ewilhelm at cpan dot org) -- more computers may be available (and we'll be in the uh... room full of computers.)

If you can bring an extra computer, please also contact EricWilhelm.

= Links =

[http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/t/spec/
The Official Test Suite] is the best place to find real Perl 6 code, much of which is runnable in rakudo.  These tests contain 'fudge' annotations for unsupported constructs and are guaranteed to be current.

[http://perlgeek.de/blog-en/perl-5-to-6/
Moritz's Perl 6 for Perl 5 users] is a great overview and rather recent.

[http://www.szabgab.com/talks/perl6/
Gabor's Introduction with Examples] seems to assume a more general audience.

[http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?what_can_i_do_with_perl_6_today
What can I do with Perl 6 Today?] - Examples like Tower of Hanoi, etc.
You can add your code to this after the meeting!

[http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/util/perl6.vim
Vim Syntax File] is optional -- just download to your ~/.vim/syntax/ directory.  Perl 5 syntax highlighters will work, but note that Perl 6 pod stops at qr/^=end/ instead of qr/^=cut/.

[http://use.perl.org/~JonathanWorthington/journal/37430
Jonathan's post on Rakudo Multi-Method Dispatch] has some advanced OO examples.
