Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed

A throwback to younger, more innocent days, back when Conway's Game-of-Life was cool:

Game of life in one line of APL. From an abstract language design point of view, there is nothing at all new here to functional programming enthusiasts. But the concrete syntax is sick. I love it.

Also, Conway himself is pretty amusing. "I mean, how do you define a cat? I have no idea!"

Also, the dude with the APL video has a funny other talk. Give it time. The sketch starts around 2 minutes in. "It... doesn't fucking bang things?"

(It makes me wonder, though, about people getting old and complaining about things being "complicated these days". I'm not convinced they're worlds more complicated than they were 40 years ago) Like, I definitely have figured out how to use that venerable but ridiculously involved program we all know and love, gnu emacs, but I think nonetheless I would be bewildered for a time if I started using Visual Studio, and I accept that this might be for a slightly longer period of time than if I first encountered it when I was, say, nineteen, allowing for increased brain mushiness. But really simplicity is in the eye of the beholder to some extent, and depends heavily on what we're used to and what we want to do.
Tags: math, programming, talks
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