c0debrain / tm

A slick Turing Machine simulator

Overview

One of the most interesting questions of our time is "what is computation?". This raises all sorts of additional intriguing questions like "in what sense is a JavaScript evaluator the same as a PDP-11?", "is an iPhone more powerful than an abacus, and if so, why?", "can the human mind be mapped onto a physical medium?", and more. The first two questions can be answered with the use of a model of computation called a Turing Machine (named after its creator, Alan M. Turing).

Now, a Turing Machine is probably not anyone's first choice when posed with a typical programming problem. It lacks much of the richness that characterizes most modern languages (for instance, it doesn't even provide a way to create subroutines), but where it really shines is its delightful simplicity.

This repository contains the source code for a web app that allows you to create and run Turing Machines of your own design. I hope you have as much fun using it as I did writing it.