In 2042, an old perlmonk recalls:

I mean, how were we supposed to know?

Take those computer sticks you get with your groceries nowadays; they have molecule memory, quantum computation, whatnot. Or take storage. My generation, we thought storage was always going to be large and complicated; databases we called 'em, and you had serveral: IBM, Oracle, Sybase, ... ah, all gone now!

Don't get me wrong, all in all the '20 patent abolition has been a Good Thing. Not many were in favour of it, but in the end it has worked. Yes, it worked all right. Now you, you are young, you have probably never experienced a failed connection, but in those days, things could go wrong, and boy they did. I tell you, there were even different ways and speeds at which things could be sent. It's strange to remember now - it does not seem logical.

And I remember the time when it was the laughing stock of engineering, AI. Yes, really, because it seemed so unlikely to ever work, and such a long time it hadn't. Little did we know that it would take most of our work and demolish our pride.

Back then, of course, we were actually paid for making software. Later, all that was left was some legacy and security work.

Well, it is now '42, gods gone, only a few monks remain, the monastery a ruin. Soon it will not exist anymore.

But still, I hope to live to see the new Perl version. It's version 6, you know, and it should be coming any day now.