People continually cite this "is not standard and available in any Perl installation" as a showstopper (whether it's XML parsing, GUI development, object framework, or any of several other things). I just don't buy it. Pick the tools you want and develop using them. If you can't require the libraries you need on your target system, well, that's a problem with your distribution method, not with perl.

Not anointing the favored solution of the week into the core has kept CPAN the paradise you describe it as.