Both examples are 2 lines. Yet solution that uses a module had (at the time I last checked) more votes than the core solution that didn't use a module at all. Is it really that much easier to read the 2nd solution?

Read some of educated foo's crusades against one-liner CPAN modules here and here for a counter-argument to using small CPAN modules. Just for the record, I don't agree with the premise, but I respect the argument.

Some of these small modules have been zenned to a functional minimum and yet may deal with subtle edge cases invisibly, or in some way Do The Right Thing.

And once the code has been hidden behind the interface of a module, it doesn't really matter what it looks like. If there's a bug, it can be corrected and you don't have to do anything. You can't do that when the snippet is scattered inline repeatedly across a large swath of code. If it's too slow, it can be XSified, and still you don't have to change anything on your side.

I believe that the more you use modules, the more you can chunk things and operate at a higher level. I've used LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Request for years, and have looked at the code for probably all of two minutes. And of the two minutes I spent, the main thing I took away was "Gee, I'm glad I don't have to worry about that."