Somebody wrote something about the difference between a programmer and a developer.

A programmer loves to code, and will do so- for the love of coding.

A developer will first look for a way not to do it- find an existing solution. If none is available- coding may be in play.

Catalyst, CGI::Application, are there for use. They are meant to be used. There is no more cheating using CGI Application and Catalyst than using open(), or perl itself for that matter- instead of rolling your own- and while you're at it- write the damn os and machine code too :-)

There is no cheating.

If you are using frameworks instead of rolling your own- you *are* learning perl.