I realize that the community doesn't seem to like prototypes

Well — not exactly. The Perl community is fine with prototypes when they’re used appropriately. The problem is, most of us come to Perl with a background in C/C++/Java, see Perl prototypes, and think, “That must be Perl’s way of doing argument checking.” But prototypes have little to do with argument checking; they are all about argument coercion.

This is explained in detail in the classic article Far More than Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Prototypes in Perl -- by Tom Christiansen (written by the co-author of the Camel Book, no less). That article is a must-read for every Perl programmer.

Hope that helps,