My reasoning is quite simple: It follows my understanding of the entire purpose of "strict". Its purpose is to guide the programmer into better, more readable coding practice and to alert the programmer to potential code ambiguities, etc. Of itself, strict appears to offer no other benefit in terms of execution efficiency or operation/functionality of the code itself. As long as strict is helpful, by all means use it--and I typically do. But if it is no longer needed or helpful, there is no sin in not using it. Tools are just that: tools--they are there to be used when you need them. If you have a bad leg, use crutches; when the leg is good, you can put them away.

It might help some here to understand my point of view to know that I have NEVER, and will probably never in the future either, had anyone work together with me on my code aside from the few and relatively minor snippets that I may have put here on perlmonks in questions from time to time. It is a very remote possibility that such will ever occur, because I don't even know anyone who programs in Perl. I know programmers of other languages--but they would shake their heads at Perl and say that they couldn't help me in that department. Essentially, my code is only ever going to be seen, understood, or maintained, by me. Programming is not my bread and butter. I don't think I've ever earned a penny for it beyond the wages I would have received anyhow for work that I chose to augment with a little coding. My mind is, if it functions well and satisfies my needs, great; if it helps, great; if it only hinders, makes life more difficult, etc., discard it.