Game of Life programs in the Wolfram Language
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg132001] Game of Life programs in the Wolfram Language
- From: Richard Gaylord <rjgaylord at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 02:11:24 -0500 (EST)
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I wanted to note that I've just posted a pdf and nb of a revised version of my tutorial "Wolfram Programming Language Fundamentals" at the Wolfram Library Archive (http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/5216/) I've changed the last section so that it now demonstrates the use of WL to write a program, actually two of them, for the Game of Life. while the programs are slower than the GoL program that is essentially a function call to the built-in CellularAutomaton function, it has the advantage of having all of its operational details shown (I have never been able to figure out what CellularAutomaton is actually 'doing' when it is executed- it's a black box to me). the second of the programs uses an anonymous function that is comprised of 3 other anonymous functions which appeals to the APL'er in me (I like terse 'write-only' code) although it can be readily deciphered by comparing it to the first program. note - both versions of the GoL program in the tutorial run equally fast (if you really want a blazingly fast GoL , you can use the 'Golly' app - see http://golly.sourceforge.net)