Strange Code

8FRACTRAN

John Conway (1937–2020) was a British mathematician, most famous to the general public for his Game of Life (see https://playgameoflife.com/), but equally famous to his fellow mathematicians for his many contributions to a wide variety of mathematical disciplines. In this chapter, we’ll examine another of Conway’s contributions, one that isn’t as well known as his Game of Life, but is perfect for our purposes: FRACTRAN. We’ll start with the specification of FRACTRAN, build it, and, lastly, use it to implement basic programs for addition, subtraction, and multiplication, among other tasks. After that, we’ll end with a discussion, like ...