1. If XP doesn't matter, then what matter the originator of the opinion? If the opinion has merit, factor it into your thinking, if not, move and ignore it. Down vote if that makes you feel vindicated.

2. Cargo-cult implies this is rote-learnt behaviour rather than experiential conclusion. Consider from where this behaviour might have been culted.

3 thru 5. You assume too much when you assume the comment was directed at jeffa or any other individual. History is the key. Where did the culted behaviour originate? How and why does it perpetuate?

When the language designers added the /o modifier, they obviously perceived of the circumstance when such optimisation would be useful and beneficial. Dismissal under a catch-all term as a micro-optimisation suggests that the designers were wrong. Its strange how often it is the same voices that routinely attribute the wares of MS, Sun and others as bloated and being part of a conspiracy to fuel the need for hardware and software upgrades, that are the first to condemn those that attempt to write clean, efficient, optimal perl code.

Add this to the list of other perl features equally dismissed in this place as being non-useful: symbolic references, global variables, goto, c-style for loops, regexen of any complexity, while loops whith implicit assignment to $_ and all the other things that have variously been "condidered harmful".