I can agree to that. It really depends if it's mostly an internal process streamlined for fast development (often enough i only have hours to days to come up with a large one-off solution that's running for a limited time and scope). Or if the module is designed for a broad audience.

What it comes down to, in my mind at least, is that many of those problems could be avoided by an enhanced, clearer syntax for conditionally specifying modules as optional requirements ("i need that or that, but at least one of them") as well as clearer syntax for conditionaly using them in the scripts (best solution would be "try this list of modules in the given order and load the first one you find and tell me which one it was").

Example: Let's say we have two modules with the same API, but one for Linux/Unix and one for windows, i could them do

my $pwmodule = use_first qw[Linux::Power Win32::Power];
my $power = $pwmodule::new();
$power->suspend();
[download]