I actually used Dist::Zilla for my very first module (in 2013, when Dist::Zilla was already fairly refined) and I remember there being a learning curve, but I was having just as much learning curve trying to figure out the other tools. In the end I went with Dist::Zilla because I hate having package boilerplate hanging around in my git repository, and because I can't ever remember to do all the manual steps during a release like updating all the version numbers in each module and updating the Manifest and tagging in git, etc.