In a recent job interview, I expressed my frustration with Perl and confessed to my interviewer that I am "eternally new to Perl" when he asked about a few scripts I had listed on my CV. Note: I am not a programmer and I sparingly write scripts but it is something that comes in handy occasionally.

When he asked why, I said that there's just too many ways to do a single thing, and, considering that I could go months or even years between scripts (apart from simple one liner types that shell scripting could accomplish just as easily), I often find myself at forums like perlmonks requesting help and am always pointed to a module or method that I forgot or didn't know existed

He had a good laugh about it and recommended a particular book. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was called - but by the way he described it, it sounded like it was written for people who would prefer to avoid the modules and 'shortcuts' and just write the raw code. I'm not sure if there's any wisdom in learning Perl in this manner, but I'd like to check it out regardless.

By any chance - does anyone know what book he was talking about?