RIP John Conway who has recently died of Covid-19 on top of health complications at the age of 82.
Conway’s Game of Life has fascinated me since I came across it at University. A simple cellular automata, basic rules give rise to emergent behaviour. Random patterns generate gliders which head off into the infinite; and more complex spaceships follow after them. This pattern is the ‘Gosper Glider Gun’ which infinitely creates gliders.
I’ve written half a dozen versions over the years, often as a project to learn a new language or graphics framework. And I’ve built several iterations with Arduino’s and LED matrix boards.
Golly is my favourite third party tool, but is so powerful and complex it kind of loses the point. Except to sit back and look at a fleet of spaceships crawling across the screen.