Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. – Donald Knuth How did people learn about the nature of, say, 1D cellular automa

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. – Donald Knuth How did people learn about the nature of, say, 1D cellular automata, or the Mandelbrot set? By experimenting, classifying, observing, testing hypotheses etc.