Re: Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt

Just a note about CPAN. Many modules are not written by experts. If you want to spend your time learning some module and adapting your program for it be sure to evalute alternatives. Often there exist several choises. Some of them is better suited for your task, some of them actually is just a pile of crap. Good example is templating modules. There exist so many of them on CPAN but people still upload new modules that do the same thing. IMHO some of them .. just doesn't deserve right for life :).

Some criterias I use myself:

Look at sources: if I don't like how it is written it is very unlikely I use it.
Does module have automated tests? It is not very important criteria but usually good programmers tend to create them.
Is it supported by its mainteiner? Usually I try to avoid unmaintained modules.

--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)

Comment on Re: Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt

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Re: Re: Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt by Hero Zzyzzx (Curate) on Dec 01, 2001 at 06:03 UTC
Yeah, I always look at most of the modules I use (and even understand some of them!). I didn't mean "Let the experts do their jobs" like "I'm too dumb to possibly understand what's going on," more in the sense that we're lucky to have the CPAN and the ability to learn from/use the excellent work being done in the perl community at large. -Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from doubletalk.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt by IlyaM (Parson) on Dec 01, 2001 at 06:13 UTC
I didn't mean that too ;) -- Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)	[reply]