Comment by DonHopkins

It really helped me get my head around how to understand and program cellular automata rules, which is a kind of massively parallel distributed "Think Globally, Act Locally" approach that also applies to so many other aspects of life.

But by "life" I don't mean just the cellular automata rule "life"! Not to be all depressing like Marvin the Paranoid Android, but I happen to think "life" is overrated. ;) There are so many billions of other extremely interesting cellular automata rules besides "life" too, so don't stop once you get bored with life! ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303313