Ok, why isn't this auto-compile checking tip up there with use strict as the best piece of advice to give a novice Perl programmer? This is like having a silent friend quietly watching over your shoulder nudging you every time you make a mistake with absolutely no extra effort on your part.

Because even beginners have editor preferences, and learning to program isn't about saving one or two keystrokes (what it takes to run perl -c yourprog.pl , either up+enter in your shell, or F7 in your editor...)

How can it be that I'm just hearing about this now? Am I more clueless than I thought or is there some kind of drawback to using this tool that I'm missing?

Monitor obstruction (the feet/toes) :D