[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[Me Here]

Gregor Richards wrote:

> BCS wrote:
> > Reply to Clay,
> > 
> > > BCS wrote:
...
> 
> Now, write a program to modify code randomly and select based on a fitness
> function, and feed it with 100 of this program you just wrote, and you've got
> a genetic algorithm! Give it a few generations, and it'll do something useful.
> 
> :P
> 
>  - Gregor Richards

Circa. 1980. Doing some work for my college professor on a 'fully-configured'
(48K) Apple ][ (kept locked in a cupboard because it ws so expensive!), the
proffesor came up with the idea that as all 6502 op-codes were 8-bit and there
were very few adressing modes, filling the (then massive) 48K with legal,
randomly generated machine code and jumping to the start address, it shouldn't
take long to recreate VisiCalc, or something more remarkable.

The program to generate the prgrams tooks less than 4k. It took some effort to
cause the trapping address to be saved to floppy disk, but we did that. Then
the next generation could reload the non-trapping code from floppy, append new
random code to the end, and iterate. That program ran for an entire 8 week
period over summer holidays. Our main fear was that the cleaner we had arranged
to swap the second (data) floppy on a (week) daily basis would forget, and we
would miss an amazing program.

The result: After 8 weeks and 40 floppys, we failed to create a single program
that ran for more than 2k of machine code before trapping.

A few years later when I related the story to a friend (autodiadactic genius),
he compared the scenario to switching a TV to a untuned channel and watching
the patterns created by the white noise. He suggested that if, in the course of
my life time, I ever saw a picture of something recognisable, form, that was
the equivalent of our "remarkable program".

He calculated the odds using an HP-41C. and then attempted to write the number
on a piece of A4 paper. He started out using fairly standard sized handwritten
zeros, but ended up with tiny, almost dot-sized ones. Needless to say. it was a
very large number. He then tried to describe the time it would take for the
energy contained in the solar system to decay to zero...I didn't understand.

b.
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