No, he's NOT saying CPAN is useless, per say, but that for large scale applications CPAN is a minor minor piece that doesn't play a big role, and what you normally get from CPAN can be found elsewhere.

"CPAN modules make easy tasks easy, which makes time for coding the hard stuff possible."

As does most of the Ruby language and it already has a huge set of libraries already available. The point is that folks use CPAN as a crutch, it is a very very nice feature, but at some point language cleanliness is not balanced by CPAN. That is, CPAN is not a member of the language cleanliness argument, and CPAN could exist in any language, nothing makes it a Perl-ism other than the way it happened.

The OO argument is very valid. Languages with a strong OO culture that get it right (Ruby, Smalltalk) are ones typically with very good language design. Java goes one way, Perl goes another.

A weak (or just sleep deprived or rushed) programmer is prevented from doing damage by what Java makes hard, but is enabled by what is made clean in Ruby. In Perl, he's likely to introduce some obscure errors. It's about language tools, not language shackles. Perl offers something akin to language TNT. Very powerful if properly directed, but can create maintaince nightmares.

Yes, I *have* unfortunately written code that I didn't grok three weeks later. It's true. Of course there is java code I've never groked at all. Just from experience, Ruby is ultra spiffy clean, and I can't wait for Perl 6.

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