Talk:Cellular automaton

Do cellular automata really count as esolangs?

For example, is CGoL really an esolang? There’s not really any “output”, unless you consider the next generation to be. Hotcrystal0 (talk) 15:38, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it is a language. Honestly, the bigger contention would be that it's not esoteric, since there's an article in English Wikipedia about wikipedia:Conway's Game of Life. A language is merely a subset of words over some alphabet, and there's no rule which says that the words must be interpreted as one-dimensional objects, nor a rule requiring some notion of output. Corbin (talk) 15:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Cellular automaton rules

Should there be a page for Cellular automaton rule 30, 110, etc. --None1 (Nope.) 10:47, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

These rules are known as wikipedia:Wolfram rules. We do have a page for the most notable of them, Rule 110, but most Wolfram-coded CAs are not interesting objects. Nonetheless, if people really want, I will help with pages on Wolfram rules or Rule 30. I'm not sure whether we can do better than Wikipedia's page on wikipedia:Rule 30, though; it's got a picture of a sea snail and everything. Corbin (talk) 15:19, 7 December 2025 (UTC)