> Of course, making such simplifications sort of defeats von Neumann's original purpose Yes. In von Neumann's last book "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata",

> Of course, making such simplifications sort of defeats von Neumann's original purpose Yes. In von Neumann's last book "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata", he thought about machines having viable offspring. This was more than a trick with patterns. He had invented the architecture of working computers, and was now moving on. As a math grad student at Harvard around 1980, the wine flowed freely on Friday afternoons. I nevertheless headed over to the biology department, where cannabis-fueled discussions centered on work like von Neumann's.