... guru ... expert ... wiz ... fully versed ...

Well BrowserUK, I think there's a wide gap between the terms you used and the concept of "understanding the platform" that caused my prior node.

Perhaps my concept of "average Perl programmer" is not the average:-)

However, I think that given the typical uses we see for Perl, it does not hurt to understand a little better the context in which your code exists and how is it tied with the rest of the platform.