To extend the analogy, perlmonks is like the staff at Home Depot. You can read the little "how-to" pamphlet, or the instruction manual for the cool new whiz-bang tool ( the man pages and perldocs), but sometimes you need a real person showing you how it is done, or pointing you to which of the various tools is best for your purpose. They know because they have seen it before, so you get the benefit of their experience.

By the way, the secret to foolproof copper soldering, is always sand the copper surfaces, before applying the acid flux. Now most manuals will say "make sure the copper is clean", but it takes an experienced plumber to say sand them. Just like here on perlmonks, there are certains usages that only come from the accumulated experience of the monks, which isn't in the docs.