I think the whole "beats you into submission" is more extreme than what most proponents of Perl::Critic mean.

My understanding of how best to use something like Perl::Critic is this:

• I can take code I'd been meaning to refactor, and figure out automatically which parts vary most from my usual current style. Those parts that differ most in style practice probably also differ most in usage of language features, since both tend to change (hopefully for the better) over time.
• I can, as a new member of a team, run my code through Perl::Critic with the team's settings a few times as a gentle reminder of where my habits differ from the rest of the team. The longer I'm with the team, the less I need such guidance because my habits will become more similar to those I'm programming with over time.
• I can, as an intermittent contributor to someone else's Open Source project, save them some time reformatting my code to their standards if I simply follow their standards rule set before submission. Since it might be very different from my own normal style, an automated check might help me change a few things before sending a patch.

I don't think any of those goals are necessarily narrowing my ability to innovate or to express my creativity in my code. I just think they can help people stick to conventions they were intending to stick to anyway, as a gentle reminder.

All that said, I almost never use the tool because I do very little work closely connected to other developers lately and I pretty much settled on my style of code some time ago. I do pull it out if I'm digging up nuggets of my sad older code or if I'm doing a hit-and-run patch like the scenario I mentioned. Most of my code older than my current coding style isn't worth reusing rather than rewriting anyway, I'm afraid.

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