`whoami` writes "Having the idea of hacking the perl core in mind since a quite long time, I recently thought that its ongoing reimplementation would be a very good opportunity to learn Perl's ropes. But like some other people I know, who would like to help out, I am hesitating because I have no idea which is a good area to begin with. So my basic question is: How and where would you start taking part in Perl core hacking, and what are good ways to prepare oneself for the specific task?
Just for illustration: I am proficient in C, have quite a lot CS Theory background ( even from university
Finally, some thoughts about the issue:
Working on the docs is not what I'd imagine. (Even if I could translate the perldocs to German, my native tongue.)
The regex engine or the code generator sound both interesting, but they have an aura to be too complex to master without a CS respectively a math degree."
Then subscribe to perl5-porters, (perlhack tells you how) and just watch for a while. See what people are doing and how they solve problems. In particular, look at the mistakes we make, and the suggestions that come from people like Sarathy, Jarkko and Nick as to how to fix them up; sometimes these corrections give you a greater insight as to how the whole thing works than you'd get from a correct patch.
In roughly a month or so, Sourcetalk will be back online, which is a site devoted to questions and comments on the Perl source code. If you're still struggling to get into Perl hacking, I'd suggest yo have a look over there.
But seriously. I meant: "How can I get involved into Perl 6 from the very beginning of the coding?"
But your advice on Perl 5 was helpful as well, Simon
