The creatingfiles/typing part is important , babysteps (learning to crawl before you learn karate)

Also, don't be discouraged :)

You are good with the pencil and paper approach, you have a pretty good grasp of the problem, you're 80% finished :)

Now all that is left is to gain confidence in the perl syntax, to better understand what your program is doing (what buckets its filling..), so you can tell the computer how to pencil in the answers for you