Fletch's node gives links to a couple of excellent threads discussing the core problems. Just for the sake of comfort though: I too spend most of my day writing C++ and I also started out thinking prototypes were some sort of compile time argument checking (they aren't - that's the problem) so used them everywhere. Probably it was exactly some such thread as this that dissuaded me, along with a bunch of other C++ism that were apparent in my early Perl. I think I've exorcised most of them now. ;-)

Oh, and controversial comments don't get you demoted here. Continuing to use prototypes may though - in RL when you get bit by a subtle bug due to them.