Re: Reliable software OR Is CPAN the sacred cow

[tilly]

I believe that someone has never read or understood the classic essay Worse is Better. There is also a good followup discussion. Do so.

As for me, I am plenty aware of the shortcomings of CPAN. For instance one of the modules that you point to as being reliable, Carp, is reliable in large part because I made it so. (And I shudder at how much buggy code there is out there which is crap because it used the old $Carp::CarpLevel interface, which I had to jump through hoops to support because people were misusing it even though it was undocumented.) However I am also aware that most people who come asking for a solution simply won't come up with something better than what is on CPAN. Therefore for them the best answer is to use CPAN.

Heck, I know that I generally won't come up with something better than what is on CPAN without doing a lot of work. If it isn't really important to me, then I should use CPAN as well. And I usually do.

If this bothers you, then you should not be using commodity software. I would suggest not using Windows, OS X or Linux. OpenBSD might be up to your standards.

A random note. You are unhappy that eval doesn't "support" source filters. Well I have news for you. If you care about reliable software, then in any language with a syntax that is more complex than Lisp, you should not use source filters. If you don't understand why, then you are not going to succeed in writing reliable software.