Lisp in Conway's Game of Life
DannyB writes:
Lisp in Life is a Lisp interpreter implemented in Conway's Game of Life.
[...] The Lisp interpreter, written in C, is compiled to an assembly language for a CPU architecture implemented in the Game of Life, which is a modification of the computer used in the Quest For Tetris (QFT) project. The compilation is done using an extended version of ELVM (the Esoteric Language Virtual Machine). The Game of Life backend for ELVM was implemented by myself.
Generating a short enough Lisp interpreter assembly code and a Game of Life pattern that runs in a reasonable amount of time required a lot of effort.
Having an infinite size Game of Life grid [...] reduces the chances that any pattern will wrap around to the other side of the grid.
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