genetic programming is back! (in my mind)

[gusl]

I used to think of genetic programming as "dumb", producing bloaty, hacky solutions to simple problems. When I think of "automatic programming", however, I think of clean, high-level languages and macros, which are basically better tools for making human-produced code. But why not mix the two? Have algorithms play with your clean code and see if they get you anywhere.

Apparently genetic programming has gotten smarter than I thought:
Genetic Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable Programs.

Genetic programming has 16 attributes of what is sometimes called automatic programming or program synthesis or program induction

Trends and Controversies - Genetic Programming

Comments

Re:

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

Who said there should be an end?

That's the beauty of evolution... it is its own end.

Re:

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

It sort of begs the question of intelligent design... which I am absolutely agnostic about. Is it even falsifiable?

btw, if you believe that our children are very likely to simulate their descendants (seems reasonable if you believe in strong AI), then by anthropic selection it's very likely we're in that sort of "Matrix" (there can be millions of simulations, but only one "real" world)