I think we can all agree that PBP is a set of guidelines, not laws. But the guidelines are very good. If I was starting a new perl shop up, I'd hand that out as the guidelines to use. Like some other folks, I think it's far more common to have complete chaos and disorder than to have fanatical rule following.

Given the two environments, I'd rather have the fanatics. But if I had the choice of working with people who thought about the rules and made conscience decisions to break them where appropriate (and Document those decisions), I'd rather have that.

As it stands today, I try very hard to pass perlcritic -brutal if I can. I use strictures 99% of the time. But I don't get hung up if brutal is complaining about something I don't care about.