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A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

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Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#21

I still can't get over how much interest the game of life maintains since it's invention. It might just be my favorite "field" of CS at this point. It's such a satisfying intersection of maths, coding, "biology", and "biological engineering".

You could add "existential philosophy" to the list too.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#23

I still can't get over how much interest the game of life maintains since it's invention. It might just be my favorite "field" of CS at this point. It's such a satisfying intersection of maths, coding, "biology", and "biological engineering".

I like to think of this as the power of simplicity.

A transistor is a simple piece of electronic, when combined in billions, it supports the incredible information transformation we see today.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#24

I still can't get over how much interest the game of life maintains since it's invention. It might just be my favorite "field" of CS at this point. It's such a satisfying intersection of maths, coding, "biology", and "biological engineering".

One that Conway didn't like much, saying (roughly) that it had all been explored and proved and other work of his was more interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA in this Numberphile interview with him.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#25

I knew GoL was turing complete so theoretically this should be possible. I just couldn't even imagine imagining wanting to try. So this is rather impressive.

I’ve got to imagine there’s some sort of GoL compiler that takes more writable code and compiles it to a board state, given we know about a whole set of machines that do specific things (gates and whatnot)

There is a rather roundabout route to compiling software to game of life cells that is pretty interesting. It is of course completely impractical but the idea that it could be done is intriguing.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#26
post #11

Not so exciting but still pretty cool: Conways Game of Life in a few lines of otus lisp* https://github.com/yuriy-chumak/ol/blob/master/samples/Conve... * otus lisp is a descendant of owl lisp ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utOVF0U7Zd8 ) with a nice ffi - http://yuriy-chumak.github.io/ol/

I wonder when someone will code GoL inside GoL

A while ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#28
post #11

Not so exciting but still pretty cool: Conways Game of Life in a few lines of otus lisp* https://github.com/yuriy-chumak/ol/blob/master/samples/Conve... * otus lisp is a descendant of owl lisp ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utOVF0U7Zd8 ) with a nice ffi - http://yuriy-chumak.github.io/ol/

I wonder when someone will code GoL inside GoL

Given there is a Lisp implementation of GoL and a GoL implementation of Lisp, it's already done!

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#29

I knew GoL was turing complete so theoretically this should be possible. I just couldn't even imagine imagining wanting to try. So this is rather impressive.

I’ve got to imagine there’s some sort of GoL compiler that takes more writable code and compiles it to a board state, given we know about a whole set of machines that do specific things (gates and whatnot)

https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/APGsembly

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#30

I knew GoL was turing complete so theoretically this should be possible. I just couldn't even imagine imagining wanting to try. So this is rather impressive.

I’ve got to imagine there’s some sort of GoL compiler that takes more writable code and compiles it to a board state, given we know about a whole set of machines that do specific things (gates and whatnot)

Not too different in concept to automated IC layout from Verilog or VHDL.
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