Add Game of Life exercise #2281

Steffan153 · 2023-05-06T22:28:51Z

https://forum.exercism.org/t/conways-game-of-life-exercise/5509

I don't think this is enough tests, but I'm not quite sure what to test. Should I add more random matrices, or should they be more specific cases?

github-actions · 2023-05-06T22:29:05Z

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IsaacG · 2023-05-07T02:24:24Z

Do you want to have the number of turns be an input parameter?

igbanam · 2023-05-07T10:20:40Z

To test for efficiency, the problem statement could be "How many generations are there between populations X and Y?"

…though, this would mean we have a timeout on the test-runner

kytrinyx · 2023-05-07T11:29:13Z

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

+          [1, 1, 0],
+          [0, 0, 0],
+          [1, 0, 0]
+        ]


I like the choice of a matrix of ones and zeros to represent the input and output. I would imagine that most languages can use that in their implementations with very little fuss.

kytrinyx · 2023-05-07T11:29:20Z

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

+        "matrix": [
+          [1, 1, 0],
+          [0, 0, 0],
+          [1, 0, 0]


I like the choice of a matrix of ones and zeros to represent the input and output. I would imagine that most languages can use that in their implementations with very little fuss.

kytrinyx · 2023-05-07T11:29:43Z

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

+        [1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1],
+        [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
+        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]
+      ]


In order to fully specify the basic rules of the cellular automata, I think we should have at least the following tests:

Underpopulation: live cell that dies due to having no live neighbors

Underpopulation: live cell that dies due to having only one live neighbor.

Survival: A live cell that survives to the next generation due to having two live neighbors.

Survival: A live cell that survives to the next generation due to having three live neighbors.

Overcrowding: A live cell that dies due to having four live neighbors.

Reproduction: A dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell.

In each of these, there would only be one turn.

I would instinctively want to have individual tests for a live cell that dies due to overcrowding with five, six, seven, and eight live neighbors, but I don't know this problem well, so I can't tell if this would be overkill.

Ideally each of these tests would have the smallest possible matrix with the fewest possible changes.

I think this is a very good idea. I think it would be great to see a test for each count of neighbors. Maybe with an empty border so there's no literal edge cases.

Would it also make sense to have a grid which combines all those individual minimal unit tests into a single test?

Would it also make sense to have a grid which combines all those individual minimal unit tests into a single test?

That would be a puzzle:

Alive neighbors 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Cases 1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1

(Multiply by 2 to account for the focus being alive/dead.)

Also, it is impossible to have test cases that only check certain numbers of alive neighbors, for all numbers. (But is is very much possible for some.)

It doesn't have to be perfect.

# Zero 000 000 000 # One 100 000 000 # Two 110 000 000 # Three 101 000 001 # Etc

For combining, I meant literally having a larger matrix which has the minimal matrices copy pasted into non overlapping sections.

IMO we don't need an Overcrowding test for every number, but the test I added for it naturally has different numbers of neighbors for each cell.

Could we rename this test? "Random" data doesn't make for a good test. Maybe "larger board" or "bigger test"? If it's random, what is it actually testing?

kytrinyx · 2023-05-07T11:34:59Z

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

+    {
+      "uuid": "ae86ea7d-bd07-4357-90b3-ac7d256bd5c5",
+      "description": "empty matrix",
+      "property": "gameOfLife",


In terms of exercise design, I'd like to have a different name for the property.

If the implementation of the exercise gets created via a generator we'd end up with both the top level namespace and the property under test being game of life. I'd like to start with names that are a reasonable default. People can always choose to override this in an individual track, but starting with a good default helps tremendously.

I'm trying to think of names that have to do with the flow of generations, or population... maybe tick (the generations tick by)?

tick, round, simulate, advance, next

Any or all of those sounds good to me

I like all of those too

IsaacG · 2023-05-07T15:38:42Z

To test for efficiency, the problem statement could be "How many generations are there between populations X and Y?"

…though, this would mean we have a timeout on the test-runner

I believe all test runners have time outs. It's part of the test runner infrastructure.

Another approach is asking how many cells are alive after N rounds. While it might be more "fun" or interesting to have different function signatures, I'm not sure it adds too much to the problem. It does provide a bit more room for flexibility in the approach; if I'm just counting cells or generations until a certain pattern, it would be easier to switch from a 2D array to a collection of points (which is more efficient for sparse data). If I'm doing a single tick, using a sparse collection is harder.

Steffan153 · 2024-03-25T19:33:21Z

Sorry I took so long! I've added a bunch more tests.

ErikSchierboom

Looks awesome! Just a couple of tiny nits.

exercises/game-of-life/metadata.toml

exercises/game-of-life/description.md

Co-authored-by: Erik Schierboom <erik_schierboom@hotmail.com>

Steffan153 · 2024-03-28T01:26:18Z

Does this need an icon btw?

ErikSchierboom · 2024-03-28T08:35:30Z

Does this need an icon btw?

It does. We'll get it sorted.

exercises/game-of-life/introduction.md

Co-authored-by: Erik Schierboom <erik_schierboom@hotmail.com>

ErikSchierboom

Great work!

IsaacG · 2024-03-29T17:15:16Z

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

+        [1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1],
+        [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
+        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]
+      ]


Could we rename this test? "Random" data doesn't make for a good test. Maybe "larger board" or "bigger test"? If it's random, what is it actually testing?

MatthijsBlom

I can't find the right headspace right now to review this thoroughly, sorry.

ErikSchierboom · 2024-04-01T16:59:39Z

Cc @exercism/reviewers

ErikSchierboom · 2024-04-03T09:46:56Z

@glennj or @BethanyG, would one of you have time to review this?

exercises/game-of-life/canonical-data.json

ErikSchierboom · 2024-04-05T07:11:18Z

Thanks @Steffan153 for creating this PR! It's a wonderful addition,

Add Game of Life exercise

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Steffan153 and others added 2 commits March 25, 2024 13:32

Better tests

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Merge branch 'exercism:main' into game-of-life

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Co-authored-by: Erik Schierboom <erik_schierboom@hotmail.com>

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Add Game of Life exercise #2281

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Add Game of Life exercise #2281

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