Lately I've seen many posts asking questions how to do certain things that have already been done in modules available on CPAN.
If the poster of that question simply has a normal problem to solve, it is usually best to redirect their question to the corresponding modules, like all questions that have been asked about 'how to fetch the input in a CGI-script' (look at CGI.pm of course).

But one thing that bothers me a bit is that some people just want to learn how things work. Of course you can always look at existing code in these modules (I've done that a lot myself and learned lots of it), but sometimes that code is just too advanced for the stage the programmer is in, and the module looks just like an application for the obfuscation contest...even though it may be 'normal' Perl...

These posters still get responses like: "look at this module", "don't re-invent the wheel", "I'm not going to answer this because it's already been done". Of course it's been done, but if the poster explicitly asks for help and doesn't want to just use existing code to learn how to do it, what's wrong with that?

I'll probably get voted down for this and starting some flamewar...oh, well....

Jouke

In reply to re-inventing wheels by Anonymous Monk

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