in reply to In need of guidance
"laziness is flowing through my veins which led me not to read posting instructions"
If you're hoping that your mode of laziness is the one recommended for Perl programmers, you're wrong.
One aspect of true laziness is making sure you understand the instructions/requirements/syntax... so you can use them without constantly needing to resort to the reference material. So, try On asking for help, for starters.
Another, also relevant here, is practicing the advice in the initial response. So, yes, you sorta brought that on yourself with your unabashed arrogance in assuming the Monks would so your research for you. Better, use Super Search here, as well as the search engine suggested by AnonyMonk or some alternate poison of your choice.
BTW, if you're just "slowly reading" the Llama, it might be a bit presumptuous to expect that your first "actual project" will result in something "something productive and useful to people" when your first project is
- potentially, re-inventing the wheel, since you didn't JGFI,
- an endeavor of such difficulty and complexity.
You might want to try something a little easier
...say, a new programming language that writes a program to DWYM from input of no greater specificity than "I wanta' find all the FASTA sequences shared by humans and chimps"...
...or a program that assures world peace for the rest of time.