Rather than reply to each node and basically say the same thing, I'll just do it here.

The point of the first section is to pay attention to those who have more experience programming with Perl and try not to follow in the footsteps of those whose will never learn Perl no matter how long they use it. Judge a programmer by the work they produce not their resume. That new "kid" may already be a wizard. The senior programmer that acts as your supervisor may or may not have earned the position. If you find a wizard, pick up some pointers along the way. The eternal Perl user keeps making the same mistakes. If you learn from your (or their) mistakes the first time, you can move on to new mistakes and a new understanding.

The way that hash slices were treated seemed to confuse more than help. I was just using them as a continuing theme that started with this comment "That said, code that is destined to be released into production is not the place to practice your new found knowledge of hash slices." Perhaps I should have stressed the "new found knowledge" a bit more. I'm not saying that @hash{@array} = (1) x @array; should not be used for this sort of thing. What I am trying to say is if you don't know something every well, fall back on the idioms that you do know. It may have been a bit clearer if I had moved "Double (or even triple) check your data" right after that section since it picks up the hash slice theme by using the misremembered @hash{@array} = (1 x @array); (which just creates a string of ones as the value for the key created by the first element of the array).

The links. It looks like that idea didn't work out either otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned them. If you read the last section "Use every available resource" (you didn't read it because you were distracted by all the links, right?), you'll find "There is a wealth of information that is only a few clicks and keystrokes away." Based on the feedback, I really did go overboard with them and I apologize.

Update: Split the last sentence of the first paragraph into two sentences to clarify the meaning.