use Perl

It looks like a Google search for ewaters yields my use.perl.org profile first. Which is odd, but okay.

I doubt anyone will read this, but can I ask: am I an asshole?

I found a module via search.cpan.org (my most frequently used website) and found it failed to build on one machine. I looked for rt.cpan.org bugs, found none, and so made a report of the build failure to the author via rt.cpan.org (I reported a bug). They got super pissy at me for not reading their POD, and not noticing that they hate rt.cpan.org and refuse to use it. They also got real snippy saying that there is no bug in their test suite, that it's a bug elsewhere (this build failed on an old machine so I wouldn't be surprised). But rather than resolving the bug and spending two sentences saying why it's not their problem, and where the problem is (to save future people who may do what I did), they called me an asshole.

Where did I go wrong?

I fear I keep trying to reinvent the wheel. Every time I sit down to write perl code, I need to get in the habit of searching CPAN -- throughly. I've been working on a PDF generator, and at first didn't find anything on CPAN. Then, I looked again, and found PDF::FromHTML. Now, there's plenty of things that FromHTML doesn't do (such as support for CSS) which is integral to what I'm working on... but still, I do wonder if it'd be better for me to work within other people's frameworks rather then trying to do it differently just because my needs happen to be slightly different.

Or, is it possible that we need lots of different, similar tools that do slightly different things for slightly different purposes?

Okay, so I love Perl. I admit it. I seem to think and dream in Perl. I should probably get involved in the community more, because as I read about Perl, I learn techniques I never would have thought of. The Perl Advent calendar rocks for this purpose.