CPAN ... All of which represents "thoroughly debugged code that you can simply install ..."

No and no, that is (unfortunately!) a (potentially dangerous!) misrepresentation.

TiffanyButterfly:

CPAN is awesome, but factors when choosing a module should also include: does it have tests, do those tests pass, how many releases have there been, how recent are those releases, do the bug reports indicate that there might be problems for you, is the documentation understandable, what do the reviews (if any) say, and finally, it has to actually install. If you don't want to go through checking all that yourself, have a look at module recommendations that experts have complied, e.g. Task::Kensho.

Plenty of excellent stuff on CPAN but also plenty of stuff in need of more work because of one or more of these categories.