An “extreme fast Perl workshop?”   (blink...)

“Ordered to” finish a few programs ... “For a positive grade?”   What is this, high school?

No, it’s probably the beginnings of what we call a “death march,” only sugar-coated and draped in quasi-athletic jerseys.   In the real world, you don’t get brownie points for doing work “quickly.”   Your work will be in production for a dozen years so it must be done well.   If the company is pressuring you to learn how to sling-out garbage “quickly,” then very quietly but very quickly look for another job.   One that provides professional training but without the jock-strap expectations and misguided pressures.   If you survive in such a place for more than a year (and they probably calculate that only a small percentage of you actually will ...), then you will be doomed to maintain that code.

“It takes three times as long to do it wrong.”   If you are in a situation that emphasizes “speed,” either so that you “do not fail” or in order to prove what a whatever-you-think-you-are you are, instead of teaching you how to produce real quality, then you are in a lose-lose situation that they write books about.   It takes time to learn how to do this well.   Make sure that they are guiding you toward realistic and sustainable expectations.