I decided to test your assertion that use strict;use warnings; would not help this OP. When I ran the OP's code with strict and warnings after adding 'my' where needed I got the following:

Bareword "a" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at 962926.pl line 
+10.
Execution of 962926.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
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That is one thing it would have helped with. So I added quotes to get the code below. Have a look at the warnings I got then. Clearly would have been helpful. Probably a 'good choice'.

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use strict;
use warnings;

print "what is your name\n";
my $name = <STDIN>;
print "hello $name";
print "select letter\n";
my $select = <STDIN>;
if ($select == 'a')  
{
    print "good choice\n";
}
else 
{
    print "bad choice\n";
}
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Argument "a" isn't numeric in numeric eq (==) at 962926.pl line 10, <S
+TDIN> line 2.
Argument "a\n" isn't numeric in numeric eq (==) at 962926.pl line 10, 
+<STDIN> line 2.
good choice
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