If you're in the Portland, Oregon area, come to the Portland Perl Mongers September 2010 Meeting on Wednesday, September 8.

Not only will Schwern talk about Test::Builder 2 (Test::Builder is the foundation of the Perl Testing Revolution), but I'll talk about what novices must understand about Perl 5 before they can become adepts.

We're experimenting this month with a combination of novice-friendly primers and deeper subjects. We'd love to attract more people interested in Perl but not necessarily experts as well as people who've never written much Perl at all. Tell your friends.

... and for a preview of my talk, I'll explain:

The two types of context in Perl 5

What context really means, and why you already understand it

What implicit variables really mean and why you already understand them

What concision means and why it's not as scary as you think

How to chunk Perl expressions into parts you already understand

How to navigate the Perl 5 documentation

If you can't make the meeting, I'm sure a podcast will eventually appear. You could also read the draft of Modern Perl chapter 1 for an overview.