Shift-Click the flag. Make sure it says "Turbo Mode". Click the green flag if the program didn't start already. Watch the numbers in the "Variables" List grow to infinity and beyond!! (Just kidding). Click "See Inside" to see how it works. Read the Notes and Credits below.
Where I got the project idea: http://precollegiate.stanford.edu/circle/math/notes08f/bignumbers.pdf Imagine a calculator that has a bunch of variables in it, (say, A, B, C, . . . , all of which are initially zero), and only allows the following sorts of operations: • A + + Increment the value of variable A by 1. • A − − Decrement the value of variable A by 1 unless A = 0. • A :: x If A 6= 0 go to line number x; otherwise, continue to the next line. Here is a 23 line program written in the language above. 1: E + + 2: E + + 3: E + + 4: E + + 5: B + + 6: A − − 7: A :: 5 8: A + + 9: A + + 10: B − − 11: B :: 8 12: C − − 13: C :: 5 14: C + + 15: A − − 16: A :: 14 17: D − − 18: D :: 5 19: D + + 20: C − − 21: C :: 19 22: E − − 23: E :: 5 Try to figure out how large the numbers A, B, C, D, and E (in my program, the items in the "Variables" list) get by the time the program terminates. It is fairly impressive, given that essentially the only allowable operations are “add one”, “subtract one”, and “branch if non-zero”. I figured it out: in the end (if you wait until the end of the world for this thing to finish) , item 4 in the variables list will become 2^2^2^2^2^...^2^2, with 65536 2's. Now that is insanely large!
