the nature of code ~ first thoughts

the nature of code

Code is truly a bizarre thing, symbols that move electrons around that allow you to read this blog post and it all boils down to 101011101000101111100010010.

To me this is incredible and I often wonder if people really understand the magic that is happening in all the devices that we seem so enamored with.

I'd say for the most part no. The world is moving fast, really fast, and our little monkey brains really can't keep up with it all.

We are not designed to think about the inputs of over 7 billion people. Imagine what seven billion people would look like if they all stood beside each other. They would take up the same space as the state of Delaware or 7200 sq kilometres.

If you triple the worlds population then you get the prediction for the amount of connected devices by the end of 2017.

Moving 1's and 0's around to convey ideas or thoughts to a virtual audience of potentially 20 billion devices is what a lot of web developers and programmers do everyday, but they also facilitate this interaction to everything that is connected. If code didn't exist all this connection would be lost.

Let's think about it a different way, devices are now hubs for interaction, you share a video with a friend, you message a colleague, you talk to someone you don't know on Twitter. The list is endless, this is only possible through 1's and 0's.

A binary choice at the lowest level, at this level the world is simple yes or no, true or false, go or stay. In many ways life is a series of binary choices just like computer programs.

so what's my point

What if nature reflects this idea of multiple binary choices that ultimately lead to the nature of reality. To me a lot of things around us seem programmed. The world is spinning and in a loop around the sun, the sun is in a loop around the galaxy and so on. They are in while loops while(exists){life} kind of like this:

Of course and I'm not going to put you through the pain of an infinite loop, but hopefully you can see my point.

Fibonacci ~ nature's symmetry.

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature’s numbering system. They appear everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are therefore applicable to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even all of mankind.

How would you code the formula to make the bracts on a pinecone? perhaps like this:

moving forward

Over the next weeks I plan on looking a little deeper at some of these notions and really explore the nature of code. My schedule has got pretty packed over the last month or so. I've had a number of projects in the fire, one of which is a poker hand evaluator which you can play with here.

I'm looking forward to starting school again which will give me a great excuse to dive a little deeper into this topic and create some interesting projects.

See the Pen random walkers by Adam Harpur (@harps116) on CodePen.

Resources:

• Nature of Code book By Daniel Shiffman
• Videos series to accompany the book