I vote creative. I don't like the argument of "re-inventing the wheel". While you shouldn't spend weeks beating your head against a wall, doing it yourself and THEN looking at the module is a great way to increase your mastery of the langauage, and of programming skills in general. There is always more than one way to do it :). After doing it yourself, you can look to see how a module does it, and perhaps learn something new. You may be happily surprised to see it is almost identical to your way of doing it. You may learn a great insight. In most cases, the module will work at least as well as your code, and probably better. However, you may decide to keep yours, or just "steal" parts of the module, to make your code smaller, or faster, or easier to read, or whatever your goals are. Modules allow for a quick and easy solution, but try it yourself first to learn more.