I agree with what everyone has said here, and after taking the road less followed (i.e., not using modules) I can confirm this is an ugly dead end in a dark alley.

In other languages I would tend to agree that it's a good way to learn, but the deeper I get into Perl the more I realize it is the nuance and subtleties of Perl that make it viable. Without this knowlege Perl is just a bulky advanced shell. I'm beginning to see that the modules hold as much to learning Perl as the books.

It will take you twice as long to learn Perl discovering it through your own code then it will understanding CPAN modules. Furthermore you will end up throwing out all of your code and starting over just a short way down the Perl road from where you are now. Besides, coding in a way that you and others can reuse it is where the real future of coding in any language is now.

Learning to code some silly 20 line script in a way that it could be reused is learning Perl. Unlike other languages Perl is constant discovery. If you were to venture into a wilderness and there was a map from a previous explorer would you learn more by adventuring without that map?

coreolyn