The original question is posed backwards.

It's not a question of "Do good Perl practices carry over to othe rcoding?", but rather "Do good coding practices carry over to Perl?". To which the answer is an obvious 'yes, of course, to a degree suited to the situation'.

For a twenty line html page with nothing remarkable that anyone can understand in the blink of an eye, it would be a waste of resources to comission a pre-coding study, flowchart the process, create a coding standard, comment every line, and document testing and revisions. On the other hand, all that might prove very useful when putting together a 1,000-page website.

But "preparation and documentation adapted to the situation" is a triste banality.

As for embracing advances, the original question contains the conundrum: "be safe and innovate". "Stay dry and get wet". Everyone wants the advantages of the latest technology (the flexibility of dhtml, the styling and maintainability of CSS) with the reliability of HTML 1.0. So, once again, it's situation that tips the balance one way or the other. There is no hard and fast rule. One client wants to simply deliver data to their clients and reliability is paramount. Another is trying to catch the limited attention span of teenagers and flashiness is paramount. Another wants to be able to maintain pages internally so maintainability is paramount.

In general, the only place unbendable rules are appropriate are in one's most basic definition of one's self, but that's another topic.....