while it may be necessary and uncomfortable to use other peoples code, i do belive that it is a good idea to know what the code you are using is doing. When I first used modules I was completely unfamiliar with what I was doing with them, I was just using regurgitations of what other people had done. when I realised what the area of the module that I used a lot did, I became more (ahem)enlightened(sorry.) to what the uses of perl were. so, by questioning the module and asking/researching what it was doing in certain stages I could develop a greater understanding of the language. BTW, I am a fairly extensive module user, but I still sit down and research what one will be doing if I use it a lot.