Again semantics, but I would argue that the only time you ever need to crack open the black box is when you feel that the black box's specifications aren't what you need. File::Temp has a certain set of CPU and RAM specifications along with its feature specifications. tachyon obviously felt that the hardware specs for File::Temp were too high for his needs. So, cracking open the black box to find out how it works is appropriate.

My point is that figuring out how the black box does its work is different from analyzing the low-level specs for the black box. We should all, as we improve in skill, have a greater understanding for the low-level specs. I still argue that I don't need to read the source in order to understand how bucket brigades work in Apache.