1. Core Hackers of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Perl Chip Salzenberg <chip@topsy.com>

3. Difficult job

4. Unforgiving language (C)

5. Extreme portability

6. Twisty maze of macros

7. Cruft and inconsistency

8. Picky pumpkings

9. Delayed gratification

11. But they're not obstacles

12. Hacking the Perl 5 core is fun

13. That's why I do it

15. Perl 6 is not the next version of Perl 5, it's a new language inspired by Perl 5

16. Did Scheme kill Lisp? Did C++ kill C?

17. Perl 5 will be a going concern for a long time

18. The Black Pearl was consigned to Davy Jones's locker ... but not for long

20. Boredom is nature's way of telling you that you have nothing left to learn

21. You learn a lot about Perl and C hacking the core

22. Amaze your friends! Confound your enemies!

24. Sounds familiar doesn't it

26. Sounds familiar doesn't it

27. “Industrial-strength also means not safe for pets and small children” (thanks Peter Norton)

29. C is as safe as a bumper car in comparison

30. C optimizers are mostly Very Good

31. It is possible and fun to write good C

32. C as a language has much to recommend it

33. Perl stole much C syntax and semantics for a reason – Larry has good taste

34. C type system plus a few carefully written macros = compiler is your friend

36. Requires effort and attention, and testers

37. Perl 5.8 (?) uses ISO C

38. Perl 5.12 will probably use inline functions

39. Metaconfig does detective work

40. Portable C is a useful skill

42. Some macros could be more usable

43. Many macros could now be inline functions

44. Core hacking fun: doing this

45. Side job: Supporting old XS

48. Redesign work

49. Side job: Supporting old XS

51. A pumpking who can't say no fails

52. A pumpking who can't say yes also fails

53. Git branching allows cheap experiments

54. New “corehackers” git repo will attract cutting edge testers and wider peer review

56. Corehacker releases should be frequent, on the Parrot/Rakudo model

57. Perl 5 release process apparently needs some reengineering (?)

59. Side order: 5.10.1 perldelta

61. How to share and discuss other tasks? Open problem

62. Submit code to corehackers: mail patches and git repo links to p5p