Ask HN: Is CPAN all that good?
I keep looking into the language wars and I believe perl is a crappy language for many reasons and anytime anyone says that all the perl fanboys reply is "CPAN", is it really THAT impressive?
CPAN contains modules for "everything", which is an enormous time-saver. CPAN also hooks in with automated test-suites, and build-reports for different environments so while the quality of various modules may be variable it is usually obvious very quickly if you're looking at a "supported" module or not. (A poor author will ignore the facilities available to them.)
I enjoy perl, and tend to believe most languages are "crappy". But it is the users who make that a real thing - good code is good code, bad code is bad code, and while a language obviously influences users they tend to be "OK" by default.