November 26, 2011

Conway’s Game of Life

A few weeks ago, Ryan Bigg recorded a screencast in which he tries TDDing an implementation of Conway’s Game of Life.

I promptly put the smackdown on Ryan on Twitter.

I then sat down and recorded the beginning of a screencast in response.

Since then life has been busy, and I haven’t had time to finish it. In the interests of not wimping out, I'm publishing the first bit.

Download it here.

Comments and criticisms are welcome! The Game of Life is a rich enough problem that there are many ways to tackle it. I've picked a starting point that works for me, but there are others that are equally good or better.

Links:

I like it a lot more than Ryan’s way of doing things.

It feels like Ryan already knew exactly what he wanted to do and applied TDD a bit the other way around.

The way you do is much closer to the real problem IMO.

November 26, 2011
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