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From: g2kafka@cdf.toronto.edu (Patrick Tierney)
Subject: Re: FAQ? I'm not ready yet! (Rucker Book)
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References: <aberenzw-3001951205090001@pierson-college-kstar-node.net.yale.edu> <3gp76g$g0q@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <3h4reg$n1@hippo.shef.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 23:48:30 GMT
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In article <3h4reg$n1@hippo.shef.ac.uk>,
R.Colasanti <r.colasanti@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <3gp76g$g0q@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, brown@altair.krl.caltech.edu 
>(C. Titus Brown) says:
>>
>>book "Artificial Life Lab" (?) by Rudy Rucker is decent.  I haven't found a
>>copy, so I can't vouch for it.
>>
>	I have and I can recommend it without reservation. The writing stile
> is clear without being patronising. The soft ware is good and the 
explanations
> and algorithms very well laid out. This is the best of the "popular" 
>book/software book combinations. There are others, but they have a rushed
>bandwagon feel about them. It is a very good starting point. I still referance
>it.
> 
>Ric Colasanti
>R.Colasanti@Sheffield.ac.uk 

I second this very strongly. This is a great introduction to artificial
life, and the software is explained in such a manner that the obvious
next step is to start creating your own alife experiment. The book's
writing style seems to be aimed at the bright high-school student, but
there is a sufficient concentration of well-explained information, that
it is a good read for any newcomer to the field.

The first few chapters give an overview of some of the ideas of the
field, things like chaos, cellular automata, FSM's, and evolution.
Later parts of the book document the included software in a rigorous
manner. But my favorite part of the book is an explanation of every
data structure and process used in the program at an abstract level.
Thus, you can get a fairly good idea of exactly how you would 
implement, for example, a version of Reynold's Boids (filtered of 
course through the author's perspective). At this level of 
documentation, it is very straightforward for the reader to conceive 
of other features or interpretations they would like to experiment with, 
and then to directly start coding them.

To be honest, I got a lot more from the book than from the actual software.
While it is very pretty, implements many forms of alife creatures,
and is easy to fiddle around with (changing world parameters on the fly),
in the end, I never really could see my way to setting up experiments
and running them with it.

All in all, though, a great companion to the Levy book.

Patrick Tierney
g2kafka@cdf.toronto.edu

