In Clojure, you can handle this with STM holding the state of the world, where changes are wrapped in transactions. Rich Hickey's talk on the subject is here:

In Clojure, you can handle this with STM holding the state of the world, where changes are wrapped in transactions. Rich Hickey's talk on the subject is here: http://blip.tv/file/812787 http://blip.tv/file/812787 The first half is sort of a description of the Clojure philosophy, the second half is building an ant simulation very similar to this game of life but with STM instead.