Ahh yes. Why must we all do this, once? This is certainly in the list of "things reinvented by Perl programmers as a rite of passage", just like templating systems, CGI form parsers, command-line argument decoders, generic object attribute systems, object persistence, deep-copying algorithms, and the like. ... Please Don't Reinvent The Wheel needlessly.

You're a Perl trainer and I think you should know better. Re-inventing wheels is a great way to learn a language. Besides, if no-one reinvented wheels, we would never get better modules. It's not always good to worship a module and never reconsider its entire design.

CGI form parsers are a great way of learning how split works, and how hashes work.

Building a simple templating system is a great introduction into the world of substitutions.

Parsing @ARGV manually can really improve your splice skills.

Home brew object attribute systems and object persistence creations are to many a good way of OO self-education.

Deep-copying alghorithms teach how to use recursion, and/or how to avoid it.


I think that stopping people from re-inventing the wheel stops people from learning.

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