Training yourself, I am serious. That's what I did, and probably did lots of other monks.
Take a three-step approach:
- Grab a book, make sure it is a good one. I started with the black book, I am sure other monks can recommend more.
It has sections about OO, hash tie, ref etc.
I like the black book, because it is solution-driven. For most of the day-to-day stuff, you would be able to find solution there. Before I read that black book, I don't know anything about Perl.
You cannot start with the manual, as it is a little bit too much, and at the beginning, you don't have any idea of the dependency between those docs.
- After you get the basic ideas of Perl, read the document. But first you have to be familiar with how Perl organize its manuals. The way it is organized looks very messy to me at the beginning.
- Read the source code of those commonly used modules.
Of course, hands-on practice, do something a little bit big, to make sure you can touch lots of different things. I did a POP3 client from scratch.
It will be easier to you, as it is obvious that you have a higher starting level than I did. I knew absolutely nothing about Perl, but you are talking about OO.