Absolutely without a doubt the biggest step up I ever made was to learn how to write CPAN modules myself, not just use other peoples.

You learn so much from it. Writing clear and effective docs, testing properly, component-based development, dependency issues, cross platform development.

It's like the difference between being able to build things with lego, and being able to create your own lego pieces.

Once you get used to it, you'll find that you start building work projects as CPAN-style distributions as well, and this can bring huge wins in terms of maintenance and reusability.

And this drives an understanding of not just programming in Perl, but in creating large applications and large systems in Perl. And the lessons from that drive understanding in creating large applications and large systems in general.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.