call for readers

[Matthias Bloch]

as "only" a perl hacker and not a compiler designer ;-), I read "intro" 
of the online documentation.
I understood that there is a virtual machine (like jvm, more efficient, 
hopefully) targeted towards running platform independent (perl) code. I 
learnt that it should make possible to mix languages and making easy 
(?!) to write compilers.
I didn't fully get the meaning of the different forms of code it 
interprets..
There is a garbage collector, so that programms running on parrot 
interpreting scripts do not need to implement this feature themselves.
Then I got some .pir to read, which I found easy and fun, my only 
problem is with the .loop in the 4. example: How does one know where it 
ends?
My BASIC instincts got back to life when I was told that 'goto' is 
perfectly o.k. in pir. Well, uhm..
What I didn't understand was why I should want to compile to pbc and see 
this in a file.

An entertaining read so far!

cheers
:m)

ps: I'll be back with more after reading the next section.