Currently, I am working on several things that I know have definitely got to be somewhere on CPAN. Why? To learn how to code that sort of thing. Maybe, if the results of the labour to make that code are comparable to that on CPAN, maybe CPAN might get a new entry. If anything, the person coding the redundant code will learn something (Hopefully).

There is nothing wrong with that. Re-implementing something is an excellent way of learning. I do it myself.

I firmly believe that everybody should write their own compiler at some point in their programming life :-)

However I would not throw code I write for learning at CPAN unless it does something that the existing modules doesn't do well. This would seem counter productive to everybody concerned.

Choice is good, and I would prefer it if the first answer was not "look on CPAN, and don't attempt to try yourself." Not that this concept might hold any relevance here. Why has TIMTOWTDI died?

Choice is of course good. However I cannot see how not pointing people to CPAN is going to increase choice. Quite the opposite.

TIMTOWTDO has not died. People take new approaches to solving problems on CPAN all of the time. I don't think anybody can say we have a lack of, for example, templating modules on CPAN.

Indeed the problem we have with CPAN is not a lack of approaches, but people re-implementing the same kind of solution again and again and again. Helping nobody.

I'm basically in agreement with perrin's comment. Most people who reject CPAN modules are doing it for exactly the wrong reasons.

One of the skills you need in being a good developer is knowing how to reuse software. This is a skill that needs to be learned by more people. Pointing people to CPAN is an excellent way to encourage people to learn it.

Far better for people to go solve new interesting problems than repeatedly solve old ones in the same way. One of the best ways for finding new and better solutions is to learn from old ones. Ignoring them doesn't help.