A hint to the developers of the future: Don't make trouble for yourself.

If you skip using strict, but then your Perl program "doesn't work", you're not going to get much sympathy from anyone. The same thing applies to any language or tool you use. If you strip off the safety guards because "you know what you're doing" but you end up with a mysterious buffer overflow or a gouge in your arm, it's your own dang fault.

Just do it right the first time, and remember -- there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.