Increasingly, I'm seeing a lot of people post questions, asking for help in fixing some really silly way of doing a task for which a Perl module has already been written. Frequently, the rationalization given by the seeker for this silliness is "management."

It seems we have a lot of budding Perl geniuses working under some very strict and brain-dead policies imposed by their supervisors. If a developer is permitted to develop something in Perl, why can they not be permitted to install modules that are necessary for them to do that development? Why are we getting people here asking how they can re-invent the wheel because their supervisor doesn't want to let them grab a free wheel from the Free Wheel Depot?

Why are many managers opposed to installing (or in some cases, using) Perl modules? Further, what information can we give to these developers to help them communicate the need for reusability to their supervisors, and to aid them in getting the proper tools and existing code to enable them to write more robust Perl scripts and applications?

I mean, the whole point of writing modules to do certain tasks is to be sure that we only have to think of caveats once, code to accomodate, and distribute that code in the form of a module. If Perl developers aren't permitted to install or use 3rd party modules, they are going to write poor code, there's no way around it.

What can we do?

In reply to Getting managers to accept Perl modules by Fastolfe

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