{"id":184,"date":"2013-04-16T13:20:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T18:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2013-04-26T12:33:49","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T17:33:49","slug":"conways-game-of-life-in-apl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/conways-game-of-life-in-apl\/","title":{"rendered":"Conway's Game Of Life in APL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a9xAKttWgP4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>APL is the sort of thing I imagine \"Programmer-at-Arms\" Pham Nuwen used in Vernor Vinge's \"Zones of Thought\" books. It seems both incomprehensibly magical while also impeccably rational, forming the shortest bridge between what the programmer is thinking and what the computer is calculating.<\/p>\n<p>Of course it also seems like you'd be building a bridge no one else could walk over. Not even you-one-year-from-now. I have a hard enough time figuring out what I was thinking when I read Ruby I wrote a year ago.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>For more, here's a <a href=\"http:\/\/dfns.dyalog.com\/n_life.htm\">written tutorial by the same fellow<\/a>. It had this helpful poscript regarding \"<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gun_(cellular_automaton)\">glider guns<\/a>\"<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Artillery in a finite manifold is a dangerous business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hehe. Good advice, I suppose.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Aficionados of the 1979 arcade game \"Asteroids\",  which took place on a torus, will recall that the manufacturers thoughtfully gave their canon a range just short of the screen's circumferences.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Found that out the hard way back in undergrad when we wrote a genetic algorithm which learned to play Asteroids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>APL is the sort of thing I imagine \"Programmer-at-Arms\" Pham Nuwen used in Vernor Vinge's \"Zones of Thought\" books. It seems both incomprehensibly magical while also impeccably rational, forming the shortest bridge between what the programmer is thinking and what &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/conways-game-of-life-in-apl\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cs","wpautop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sddF-2Y","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":864,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/some-long-overdue-book-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":0},"title":"Some Long Overdue Book Reviews","author":"jsylvest","date":"12 October 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"More Money Than God, Sebastian Mallaby Excellent. Far too many general audience finance books are written at what I think of as a newspaper reading level. (Defining even the most basic terms, assuming the reader is intimidated by any math as complicated as calculating a percentage, feeling the need to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Business \/ Economics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Business \/ Economics","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/business-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"More Money Than God Cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/More-Money-front-197x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/book-list-2018q1\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":1},"title":"Book List: 2018Q1","author":"jsylvest","date":"7 June 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I realize it is now most of the way through the 2nd quarter of the year. Whatever. Here are the books I read in the first three months. Sourdough, Robin Sloan I love technology, and I love baking bread. I'm pretty much right in the cross hairs for target\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Reviews&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover of \"Sourdough\" by Robin Sloan","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Sloan_Sourdough-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1188,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/aies-2018\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":2},"title":"AIES 2018","author":"jsylvest","date":"9 February 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I attended the first annual conference on AI, Ethics & Society where I presented some work on a Decision Tree\/Random Forest algorithm that makes decisions that are less biased or discriminatory. ((In the colloquial rather than technical sense)) You can read all the juicy details in our paper.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding&quot;","block_context":{"text":"CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/cs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1126,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/ais-one-trick-pony-has-a-hell-of-a-trick\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":3},"title":"AI's \"one trick pony\" has a hell of a trick","author":"jsylvest","date":"10 November 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The MIT Technology Review has a recent article by James Somers about error backpropagation, \"Is AI Riding a One-Trick Pony?\" Overall, I agree with the message in the article. We need to keep thinking of new paradigms because the SotA right now is very useful, but not correct in any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding&quot;","block_context":{"text":"CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/cs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1226,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/book-list-2018q2\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":4},"title":"Book List: 2018Q2","author":"jsylvest","date":"7 August 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are the books I read in April, May and June. Since it's already August, I'm going to forego commentary on some of these and just hit publish. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester This was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book List&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book List","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/book-list\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover of \"The Professor and the Madman,\" Simon Winchester","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/professor-223x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1228,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/art-in-space\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":5},"title":"Art in Space","author":"jsylvest","date":"22 April 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I'm going to put on my Tyler Cowen hat and speculate about what art work will be valuable when humans are space-faring. That's a pretty big range of possibilities, so let's keep things to a realistic, near(-ish) future. That means ignoring Iain Banks-type, post-singularity futures in which people are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Art&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/160126_NorthFront_MidTownCeres_Concept_B_v5.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/160126_NorthFront_MidTownCeres_Concept_B_v5.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/160126_NorthFront_MidTownCeres_Concept_B_v5.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/160126_NorthFront_MidTownCeres_Concept_B_v5.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/160126_NorthFront_MidTownCeres_Concept_B_v5.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}