I've come a across this attitude in a couple of places. My usual tactic is to point out that either I can use the module which has been installed and tested on thousands of servers over the last few years, or I can try to write my own code to reproduce the functionality in the module in my own code. Of course I point out that I can't guarantee that my own code will be a safe and efficient as the CPAN module.

Plan B would be to find a new job with less idiots in the sysadmin group :-)

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000
<http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>