Don Marti writes about a Linux Journal reader who is complaining about a Perl script which was published in a 1997 LJ. The script is "spontaneously" not working in 2002.
There are two issues here. First, the script in question (something that fetches web pages) didn't do input validation, so malformed URLs passed via the command line cause the script to fail silently. That's just bad programming.
Second, the script connects directly to a server and issues HTTP GET command on its own (using HTTP 1.0, not HTTP 1.1), instead of using a module. That's just dumb. This is the reason why people write modules -- because deceptively simple problems are just that - deceptive.
Perhaps after enough stories like this get out, more people will start using modules and seeing bad practices for themselves -- in print, on mailing lists and on the web.
