While agreeing with the lean core principle, I've seen Perl get severely eclipsed TWICE by completely inferior languages that sell themselves as a "kitchen sink" and as having "batteries included". This is about what people want and what Perl needs, not my favorite modules.

Clearly Perl is incomplete without modules or the corelist would not have over 600 items. The only question is what to include. My suggestions fall into 3 broad categories:

1. Complete Perl by bundling missing features (like a REPL)*
2. Update old interfaces and make things easier (like IO and Rule)
3. Encourage Perl use by using other languages in Perl! (FFI, Inline)

I would settle for Path::Tiny but this example from IO::All says it all:

replace this:

open STUFF, '<', './mystuff'
  or die "Can't open './mystuff' for input:\n$!";
local $/;
my $stuff = <STUFF>;
close STUFF;

with this:

my $stuff < io './mystuff';
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