Wow dude!! That was pretty loaded. And easier said then done ;) It's ALWAYS good to know all your alternatives.

A well reasoned point, incidentally, might be a long-lived software project with a large hierarchy of objects and a whole bunch of developers. It's a sad truth that some developers don't really care about good programming practices. Do you really want sloppy coders violating your well-designed system by making frequent calls to subroutines with underscores?

Bad coding practices sneak into the best of companies during crunch-times. And if it's the client's developers who are being sloppy, well...you don't have to be busness-trained to realize that dumping a paying client over the love of perl isn't in a company's best interest. Rather let them learn by example over time with gentil and wise encouragement.

BTW, did you go to Mac? We may have a mutual friend :)