My father is an excellent amateur woodworker and has observed the wisdom that "You should never buy a tool until you need it." Similarly I find that I don't bother with features until I must have them.

I've never used prototypes, except for one occasion which hasn't proven all that useful (to me, anyway.)

One time I experimented with operator overloading, but then merlyn pointed out a far better (and more obvious) way to do what I needed and I haven't had a need for operator overloading since then.

I've never felt the need to use tie, prefering instead to use objects when I want a variable that has behaviour.

I never use subroutine attributes, they smell bad to me, which is part of the reason Catalyst makes me recoil in horror. (CGI::App forever! :) ) I do, however, use Test::Class, which is so cool that I can get over my objection to attributes for that one case.

I never use the debugger.

I suppose the moral of the story is:

1. Keep it simple, stupid
2. You don't have to know/have everything to be productive
3. Don't let your prejudices separate you from a good solution (e.g. Test::Class).