If you are going to spout this oft-disputed advice, then at least tell them what you want them to use in place of the part you don't want them to use.

If you are suggesting my $class = shift; instead of the two lines (so no $proto at all), then you should also tell them to document that $obj->new() will silently do ugly things, creating a broken object that will likely cause confused error reports from users of their module.

Which certainly suggests to me a reasonable "purpose" for using the simple and defensive code that is suggested in the standard documentation, as the original poster did.

No, I really don't want to rehash this argument for the Nth time in this thread. Some feel strongly that $class = ref($proto) || $proto is a bad thing™. Some feel strongly otherwise. My point was that your incomplete advice in advocating your position was probably not very helpful to the original poster.

Feel free to advocate what makes sense to you. But please also say what to use not just what to not use and be aware of why this advice is often disputed and let them know what the down side of your suggestion is or link to one of the several long previous discussions of the issue. (: