Good points about the cultural side, particularly the effect of Perl not being widely taught in CS courses except for systems administration.

As for searching for posts in the monastery, I was limited by my lack of knowledge on the subject (terminology and what exactly qualifies as AI?). A few more searches on the terms you suggested do turn up several more nodes, such as:

• Genetic Programming or breeding Perls
• 1-D Cellular Automata
• Cellular::Automata::1D

And a whole bunch of finite automata homework questions ;).