I'll agree with your "A list never gets produced in a scalar context", but only for certain values of "never", "list", and/or "produced". :) That is an important concept that needs to be stressed (though I'd put less stress on the "never" part myself).

But, for the curious, see the last half of (tye)Re: Hash slices ? for a specific example of what I consider to be a list of SVs being (temporarily) produced despite a scalar context. I'm not trying to contradict the above rule. I am trying to prevent it from being "over interpreted", but more than that, I think the example will help some people understand the concept better.