http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=948176


in reply to In Need of Mentoring

My $0.02 ...

When I download a module from CPAN, I expect never to look at its source-code, and, most importantly, to never feel that I have to.   Most of all, I want to see a long list of self-tests that rigorously exercise the module.   Secondarily, I want to see thorough documentation that doesn’t require deep knowledge of the code (or, any knowledge at all of the code) in order to use it effectively.   I do not want to get the impression from the POD that the code is half-baked:   I have passed over many a module for that reason.   The design of a module intended for public use must be very considerably more stringent than simply taking a piece of code that you wrote for a project and making it public.   Obviously some serious thought must be given to how you intend for the module to be used, and for keeping the code as isolated from unwanted side-effects as possible.   But I am not going to dive into your code and critique it.   I’m not going to try to understand it.   Indeed, the very reason why I am seeking code from CPAN is so that I don’t have to understand it.

One other thing that I look at is the CPAN bug-list.   Are you fixing reported bugs in your code within, say, just a couple days of it being reported?   If the code begins to fail CPANTS tests (e.g. because some original prerequisite module has changed), are you Johnny-on-the-spot?