I agree that just because something is new does not automatically mean you should abandon the old method in favor of it. But on the other hand if a paradigm shift occurs then it likely means the new way is the better way. And in this case the impression I get is that the Perl community has shifted away from -w in favor of the warnings pragma. Hence why I called -w "old school".

I think it goes without saying that you would use "old school" methods with older versions of Perl. That's part of what "old school" implies.

P.S. Sounds like you should firewall off your test servers! ;-)