Good post! The conflict between fear of learning other people's code and the efficiency often gained by doing so seems to be one of the central themes of Perlmonks, the mod_perl mailing list, and every place I've ever worked. You have to experience a few "oh man, that would have saved me so much work!" moments before you get over your fear of reading POD. Reminds me of the first time I found Template Toolkit...

In reply to Re: Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt by perrin
in thread Let the experts do their jobs, or, A Lesson Learned, or, the CPAN coulda saved by butt by Hero Zzyzzx

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