Hacker News Reader

Imagine in 1970 someone reading Martin Gardner's Scientific American article describing 'John Conway's new solitaire game "life"'. Perhaps the reader played around with graph paper plus pencil and eraser to explore what could be done.

"Interesting", they might say. Or, "Fascinating!" even.

And then you show them this article. Just imagine how mind blowing it would be to them.

Original SciAm article -> https://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/october1970.html

View on HN

That was me, reading the original article as a youngster, working out generations on graph paper, etc. The difference is that I have been following the progress of researchers of Life through the years. It’s still astonishing!

Heh, yes, same here more or less -- I wrote an assembly-code Life program for my family's first personal computer (TRS-80 Model I) in the early 1980s, then mostly forgot all about Life for almost two decades ... until it became possible to search the Internet for "Conway's Life". At that point I was completely floored by how much progress had been made since the last time I was paying attention.

Ever since 2001 I've been keeping a close eye on new developments so I don't get surprised like that again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com