You're very brave. Perl isn't an easy language. I had a little go a little while back and ended up frustrated big time. Same happened for me with ruby I got the pragmatic programmers guide and got lost withing a few pages.

A form would be very simple (and I mean disgustingly so) with php. A very simple one could be done with a few lines of code.

Here is a free mac text editor specifically designed for coding etc.

TextWrangler

Pete.