didnt read the whole thread but for this specific question, as you started learning perl as I've done, consider the following

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @AoA = (
    [qw(0 Just 0)],
    [qw(0 Another 0)],
    [qw(0 Perl 0)],
    [qw(0 Hacker 0)],
);

# see it
# print Dumper \@AoA;

my @sortedAoA = sort{
    
    $a->[1] cmp $b->[1]
    # or reverse it comparing $b to $a instead
    # $b->[1] cmp $a->[1]
    # or use reverse function to the final array..
} @AoA;

# see it
# print Dumper \@sortedAoA;

# then to just take first X elements use a slice

for my $ar_jentry ( @sortedAoA[2..3] ){ print "$ar_jentry->[1]\n" }

# output:
# Just
# Perl

# there  are other options...
# you create a temporary list using sort and then use only first two e
+lements with ()[0,1]

print "$_->[1]\n" for ( sort{$a->[1] cmp $b->[1]} @AoA )[0,1];

# output:
# Another
# Hacker
[download]

L*