February 2001
Intermediate to advanced
578 pages
14h 43m
English
Content preview from Illustrating Evolutionary Computation with Mathematica
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7
Genetic Programming
The individual structures that undergo adaptation in genetic programming are hierarchically structured computer programs. The size, the shape, and the contents of these computer programs can dynamically change during the [evolution] process.
Koza 1992, p.80
Many computer programmers are skeptical about the idea of developing programs by applying the “blind watchmaker” principle of evolution. Some of us may remember programming as a tedious job—at least at the beginning, when programs do not run because a simple semicolon is missing or a comma has been misplaced. How can an evolutionary system, generating program code more or less randomly, succeed in developing syntactically correct and executable programs?