There already is a place for absolute newbie questions, it's called the perl.beginners maillist/newsgroup. Although the level of questions posted there are not much different from posts here. IMHO, this is a very friendly site for newbies.... of course you will get pointed to reading existing docs/tutorials, or googling for previous code examples, but what do you expect? Even in a paid school setting, a teacher will not write code for you, you will need to show some effort on your part, like reading something beforehand.