I know about it, I’ve seen videos of it, but I have no idea how it works, or why it’s important. I mainly don’t get why it’s become to infamous.
In: Mathematics
The REAL significance is that, starting in the mid 70s, novice computer users (raises hand) had a program that could consume arbitrarily large amounts of compute cycles. AFAIK ( and I was there the whole time) there was nothing like it before. I spent a big chunk of my high school life messing with it on every computer I could get my paws on, culminating with an IBM 360/65 mainframe.
Edit to add: at that site, the main competition was from a fellow amateur astronomer who was simulating collisions between two galaxies. I even remember the name of his program: WELTALL. I hated that guy 😁
Later, of course, came the Mandelbrot Set, graphics, games, Reddit, etc.
But I think Conway’s Life was the first.
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