4.1. Introduction

This goal of this chapter is to help developers quickly decide which modules to use.

MetaCPAN has thousands of modules. Its hard to know which module is the best one. For example there are at least 7 modules for parsing JSON. New modules appear all the time which make the old best solution obsolete. It can be hard to stay up to date.

The recommendations here are a biased set of opinions based on my personal experiences and on the advice of people on the internet.

Please let me know when I'm wrong. Feedback is welcome and this chapter won't be successful without it. Part of the reason I'm writing this is so people can tell me when I'm using the wrong module.

Here are some other great places to find advice on which module to choose:

• MSTPAN: mstpan is a great set of blog posts from 2015 written by mst. It is my primary source of inspiration.

• Task::Kensho: The Enlighted Perl Organization created Task::Kensho. It was one of the earliest attempts at making module recommendations.

• Task::BeLike::DAGOLDEN: Dave Golden is the author of a number of widely used modules. He keeps a list of modules he uses.

• Neil Bowers is another great Perl developer who has written some great module reviews.

• The use of some libraries is discouraged.

• rsavage has a list of links to module reviews on various blogs.