game_of_life.m

% The beauty of the right programming paradigm.
% Conway's Game of life in 4 lines of Octave code.
 
function new = life(board)
  neighbours = conv2(board, [1 1 1; 1 0 1; 1 1 1], 'same')
  new = neighbours == 3 | (neighbours == 2 & board)
end

% Create a 100x100 board and run the game in a GUI

board = rand(100) > 0.6
while (true)
  spy(board); drawnow; pause(0.3)
  board = life(board)
end