BTW, subroutine calls no longer require the & prefix character. Using them makes your code unnecessarily more difficult to read.

To the contrary, I find that prepending an & to subroutine calls makes my code easier to read. For one thing, it helps some syntax-hilighting editors hilight the subs, which is helpful. For another, it keeps with the theme of "everything with a sigil is a thingy that you can take a reference to", which I find helpful as well. The obvious caveat is that the & makes the current @_ visible to the subroutine; this hasn't bitten me in the ass yet, though.