(pronounced fern-DOI-ly) is a program demonstrating diffusion-limited aggregation.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-limited_aggregation
More simply, a circle of green atoms (dots/points) is placed in the center of the screen. Then white atoms are randomly created and move randomly until they get adjacent to a green atom. They then "stick": become green and stop moving. The result is the ferndoily.
This window uses a circle of 400,000+ (pi*375^2) pixels. The program runs until 50,000 atoms have been created and attached to the ferndoily. The atoms are added gradually (from outside the circle) because the computer can't move 50,000 atoms at one time. Early in the running, the ferndoily is small and it takes time for the atoms to come across the ferndoily and stick to it. When the ferndoily gets larger, the atoms get stuck faster.
On my desktop, the program takes around 12 minutes.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gpl3bBslDI
It takes 200,000,000+ random numbers to create the ferndoily!
A good question is, "where do the random numbers come from"?
There is much mathematics dedicated to this.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation
Programming languages come with good random number generators.
Version 2.0 changed to hi-resolution (much slower), and a circular universe instead of rectangular. Future minor changes will add color options and faster processing.
email: davefd20@dbarc.net
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