Embedded in [id://dragonchild]'s response is the suggestion that the skills you really want to hone are testing skills. You'll find a bunch of information on PerlMonks about testing with Perl and it really is becoming a crucial tool for a coder. Basically, testing is learning to pour your debugging skills into scripts so everyone can benefit (including you when you are looking at code later).

The good news is that test scripts are often smaller scripts so you'll be comfortable with them.