LifeWiki

In case anyone has a Novation Launchpad, I made Conway's Game of Life for it when I was first learning Clojure[0]. It's fun playing with cells you can press.

Unfortunately there's a lot that I would do differently now that I know a little more what I am doing with Clojure, but I haven't had the time to go back and clean it up.

[0] https://github.com/lgastako/lifepad

Life was the first non trivial program I ever coded. It was in GW Basic and required you to input the cells by typing in their grid coordinates one at a time. and it rendered the steps in the simulations using asterisks on the screen.

I learned about off by one errors and multidimensional arrays coding it. I still remember the rush of elation when I first rendered the blinker on screen and it worked.

For those who are interested in a simple Python implementation of the automa described in the wiki:

https://github.com/thearn/game-of-life

The forums are also interesting (and active):

http://www.conwaylife.com/forums/

Super interesting site. There's an interactive (javascript based) grid here - http://academo.org/demos/conways-game-of-life/ - where you can input the patterns and watch them animate over time. Never fails to entertain.

Other links to check out: http://catagolue.appspot.com/home https://twitter.com/conwaylife

All animated patterns on one page: http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Category:Animated_images

If you want to test theses out : http://conwaylife.appspot.com/library

In my opinion one of the most interesting courses on coursera called Model Thinking had a few segments devoted to this..

https://youtu.be/fna6xW76NYg?list=PLGqc26s6O0E2P2BnK73JWXk4Y...

Ruby version with multiple competing populations:

https://github.com/rickhull/conway_deathmatch

See also the elixir branch.

Warning: do not visit this wiki if you need to be productive today.