This is true, the quality of much of CPAN is quite remarkable in parts. I do see their point with regard to skills however, it's too easy to rely on the high-level view you end up with when using modules and end up not knowing the 'essentials' of computer science such as data structures etc. I don't think they was saying that they'd not have any code to write, more that they feared their command of the 'computer science' aspects would wither and die.

I've seen this reach a quite significantly scary level in some of the Java programmers I've worked with. They're used to their nicely insulative APIs, and that is good enough 'to get the job done' reasonably well most of the time, but when the problem suddenly needs more indepth knowedge of datastructures, network protocols, graphics algorithms, general optimisation, or other things they've been insulated from they just fell to pieces as they couldn't deal with it. It seemed anything outside their little books of APIs was outside their knowledge and abilities.

They almost all did computer science degrees, so assumedly were shown at least the data structures and networks parts, but now they've spent so long in their supportive language that they're unable to deal without it.

I'm not saying that code reuse is bad, far from it as can be seen from my post above, rather that reliance upon higher-level APIs/modules can be detrimental to your low-level understanding. Reuse, but make sure you still know what's going on.

In reply to Re: Re: Code re-use: productivity gains vs. skill deprecation by Molt
in thread Code re-use: productivity gains vs. skill deprecation by Phemur

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