Re: Use modules or roll your own?

Personally, for your question I'd do 2 and 3.

Myself, I prefer to try to "reinvent the wheel" so that I gain a better understanding overall of Perl. Then once I know what I'm doing, if there's a module written to do the same thing and it produced less pages of code I'd switch to the module.

Argueably, there are things that a beginner in perl could perhaps not do on their own without a module, but I would say that if they're trying to do something that complex, perhaps it's a bit beyond their scope at the moment and they need to step back juts a little.

Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...

Comment on Re: Use modules or roll your own?

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Re: Use modules or roll your own? by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jul 29, 2002 at 15:58 UTC
If you want to have a better understanding of Perl, you shouldn't be rolling your own modules, but roll your own core functions. Write your own print(), qr() and tie(). Abigail	[reply]
Re: Re: Use modules or roll your own? by Popcorn Dave (Abbot) on Jul 29, 2002 at 20:24 UTC
Well as I'm still learning Perl -- not that you ever stop learning -- I personally tend to try to do things without modules first so that I get a better core understanding of Perl. As far as writing my own print, etc... if I was interested in doing that for a project I was working on, I probably would give it a shot. Until that point though, I'll continue on down the road I travel now. I'm currently writing a program that parses HTML pages, and yes I know I could use a module, but for me, I'm sharpening my regex skills the way I'm doing it. When I finish it, I will look at using the module to see if that simplifies my code, but not until. That's just me perhaps, but it works for me. Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...	[reply]
Re(3): Use modules or roll your own? by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on Jul 29, 2002 at 20:32 UTC
I'm currently writing a program that parses HTML pages, and yes I know I could use a module, but for me, I'm sharpening my regex skills the way I'm doing it. When I finish it, I will look at using the module to see if that simplifies my code, but not until. I suppose it also depends on how important correctness is to you. If you're working on a project for your own amusement, where getting correct results isn't of earthshaking importance and you can fix bugs pretty much at your own convenience, rolling your own isn't a bad idea. If you need more robustness (business logic, public CGI, etc), you're much better off using a module that's already been tested to death. (This is the major advantage to using CGI.pm.) `-- The hell with paco, vote for Erudil! :wq`	[reply]