Developed by Tom Ray, Tierra is a program that allows simple computer code to evolve and reproduce. Ray originally began as a biologist studying evolution and hoped to create an electric powered evolution machine to better study evolution. A friend in computer science and the current ( 1980s ) rash of computer viruses gave him the idea he needed.
To keep his creations from escaping or crashing his computer with bad code he wrote a computer emulator and let his creations loose in there. The first creation was an 80 byte program designed to fill in a free memory space on his computer with a copy of itself. Each program would continue its reproduction. The programs scrambled a few bits during the copy. If a program was broken enough to damage the computer or got too old it would be killed off.
After billions of generations working mutants appeared. Smaller programs doing the best since they needed the least resources. Parasites appeared which used other programs code to reproduce themselves. Programs would then evolve that had immunity to the parasites. Social programs evolved that would cooperate or steal from each other.
The algorithm has been on the internet and you can download it and experiment with Tom Rays programs.
More information and code:
Tierra home page
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