[HN Gopher] John Conway's FRACTRAN, a ridiculous, yet surprising... ___________________________________________________________________ John Conway's FRACTRAN, a ridiculous, yet surprisingly deep language (2020) Author : warrenm Score : 65 points Date : 2023-05-16 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (raganwald.com) (TXT) w3m dump (raganwald.com) | marcodiego wrote: | TIL John Conway died during the COVID pandemic. I'm as shocked as | someone who just discovered John Lennon was killed. :( | gfody wrote: | I think the world has yet to feel the weight of this great man's | contributions. the monstrous moonshines and the freewill theorem | seem mind blowing and not very well known at all. | peterderivaz wrote: | Project Euler challenge involving Fractran: | https://projecteuler.net/problem=308 | breck wrote: | He mentions a CD-ROM version of Society of Mind | (https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/Voyager.html). I had never | heard of it. Does anyone know if the video content from that CD- | ROM is available online? | rootbear wrote: | There is a link what appears to be part one in the article. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hx8RixhoOM | jonahx wrote: | A FRACTRAN interpreter in FRACTRAN, in 24 fractions: | | https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/246682/15469 | VHRanger wrote: | Thanks, the fact that FRACTRAN didnt bootstrap its own | interpreter was the reason I didnt use the language seriously | for programming! | [deleted] | siraben wrote: | A few years ago, I wrote a compiler for FRACTRAN written in | Haskell[0] (translated from Common Lisp) with an associated blog | post[1]. Using the tagless-final style you can write a simple | program like this: sumTo :: FracComp repr => | Integer -> [repr [Rational]] sumTo n = [addi "c" 0, addi | "n" n, while (jge "n" 0) [adds "c" "n", subi "n" 1]] | | And the compiler would output this: l> | runAssembler (sumTo 10) -- Program length: | 31 Right [847425747 % 2,13 % 3,19 % 13,11 % 3,11 % 29,31 % | 11,41 % 31,23 % 11,23 % 47,2279 % 23,59 % 301,59 % 41,67 % | 413,329 % 67,61 % 59,73 % 61,83 % 73,71 % 61,71 % 97,445 % | 71,707 % 89,103 % 5353,103 % 83,109 % 5459,5141 % 109,107 % | 103,113 % 749,113 % 19,131 % 113,29 % 131,127 % 113] | l> runAsm (sumTo 10) [(Prime 97,55),(Prime 107,1)] | | [0] https://github.com/siraben/hasktran | | [1] https://siraben.dev/2020/02/26/translating_cl.html | nerpderp82 wrote: | I miss raganwald, I loved it when their posts and comments were | blowing up HN. | bmacho wrote: | Very long article, and IMO it doesn't justify the "surprisingly | deep" claim. Disappointing. Can I have my time back? | | tl;dr: a 'usage' of fractran is that fratcran programs are | collatz-like sequences, thus, the behaviour of collatz-like | sequences is undecidable. | optimalsolver wrote: | See also: "Building Fizzbuzz in Fractran from the Bottom Up | (2016)" [0] | | I'll repost my comment from that thread: | | >For some reason this makes me imagine an alternate history sci- | fi universe where Pythagoras (famous for his love of fractions) | invents FRACTRAN. Then Archimedes builds a mechanical computer to | execute those programs, and one of the successors of Alexander | The Great puts the computer to use in warfare and conquers the | world. Science is accelerated so that nuclear physics are | invented by the time Jesus is born... | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28448283 | jfoutz wrote: | I played a lot of the original civ as a kid. I'd be super | disappointed if I didn't get railroads before 0. rush pyramids, | democracy, tons of tiny self supporting towns. That game didn't | really offer a way to convert other cities and towns sort of | invasion. so I'd inevitably turn evil and conquer the world. | Good times. | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Building Fizzbuzz in Fractran from the Bottom Up (2016)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28448283 - Sept 2021 (5 | comments) | | _Open Problems in Communication and Computation (1987) [pdf]_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074413 - Feb 2021 (2 | comments) | | _Remembering John Conway 's FRACTRAN_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142232 - May 2020 (14 | comments) | | _Building FizzBuzz in Fractran from the Bottom Up_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866303 - April 2020 (1 | comment) | | _FRACTRAN_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14202367 - | April 2017 (8 comments) | | _Building Fizzbuzz in Fractran from the bottom up_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894141 - June 2016 (3 | comments) | | _In FRACTRAN, every program is a list of functions_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10091053 - Aug 2015 (1 | comment) | | _FRACTRAN - the esoteric programming language invented by John H | Conway_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3119937 - Oct 2011 | (1 comment) | oh_sigh wrote: | Has anyone made attempts at writing FRACTRAN programs which would | calculate `78 * 5^(x - 1)` and `2^x`? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-16 23:00 UTC)