I believe there are those who are going to learn to fish, and those who just aren't. It's a matter of being interested, really. Does withholding a fish from the hungry really force them to fish? I doubt it. In any case, this may be too broad a generality. Asking questions here could be thought of as either fishing or begging for fish. The difference is usually apparent, no?

One big trouble with CPAN is that there is so much stuff, and quite a few modules with overlapping capabilities. To choose among various possible solutions one must try them all out or ask somebody who has already done it. If the goal is to encourage people to use and learn Perl, isn't it better to avoid discouraging those people, even at the risk of making it too easy?

Unless Perl programming is one's main goal in life, one who is using Perl is probably really trying to do something else; Perl is a tool. If the questioner is going to explore the deeper meaning of Perl programming, he will do so because he is so motivated, not because he gets cryptic answers to his questions. At the moment he may not have the time.

It is often recommended that a good way to learn programming is by studying good examples of source code. Isn't a short example of good source code merely the reward for fishing in the right stream?