I'm going to have to pretty much entirely disagree with you.

I get the feeling from your arguments that you have your mind entirely made up to hate Perl::Critic, so I know nothing I say will convince you of it's usefullness. However, I have used it with multiple inexperienced Perl coders at work and found that it significantly improved their code quality. It introduced them to best practices that they weren't familiar with, and provided a sanity check for them against common mistakes.

They are inexperienced. They don't know common idioms and best practices. And they're never going to learn it without someone (or something) correcting them. Perl::Critic is a great start. Do they follow everything it suggests? No. But they're not complete idiots, incapable of doing research on their own. If something comes up that they aren't sure about, they search online, or ask someone else about it. They learn from it.

You seem to think that using Perl::Critic prevents people from gaining experience, although I'm unable to see any logic in that assertion. How exactly are people supposed to gain experience by making the same mistakes over and over, never realizing that they're making mistakes?

Perl::Critic helps immature Perl programmers improve. It helps out of date Perl programmers learn Modern Perl practices. It's an incredibly useful tool, and I personally have benefitted greatly from it's use.

Oh, yeah; I do run my code through it regularly, too. It makes for a great sanity check to make sure I didn't make silly mistakes.