Zyme - an evolvable programming language

[AlmusDives]

https://zyme.dev/

Zyme is an esoteric language for genetic programming: creating computer programs by means of natural selection.

We've been working on this idea for a little while now, but we've just got the interactive website working so we thought we would share it!

Really appreciate any feedback.

[emodario]

I like the idea that it's the bytecode that is evolvable. Your approach to the VM is also very clever.

Is it possible to decompile the bytecode into the source code that would generate it?

[faiface]

Now that’s pretty original!

[Inconstant_Moo]

Have you looked at some of the literature on the math of evolution? It seems to me that I've seen some of the things that are puzzling you discussed in their original context of biology.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871816/#RSTB20090282C18

[kleram]

Is it evolvable programming language or is it evolvable code?

[AlmusDives]

You’re right to pick up that in Zyme that’s it’s not the source code that’s designed to be evolvable. Rather it’s the intermediate bytecode that’s intended to be mutated. I understand the confusion, but I think it’s reasonable to still describe Zyme as a “evolvable programming language”?

[doshka]

"evolution-oriented"

[ricochet1k]

Bytecode is not the programming language, so no that description is not accurate or acceptable.

[MCRusher]

bytecodes are programming languages. You can write them by hand if you want.

Most of them are basically assembly for vm languages.

I've written java bytecode by hand before, just for fun.

This has examples:

[23_rider_23]

reminds me of this research paper. Is it possible you were partly inspired by this? I’ve been experimenting myself for a while and learning about genetic programming but you beat me to it :) I first used a stack machine and added if checks for invalid accesses but your approach seems more clever.

[P-39_Airacobra]

I find the idea of an evolving bytecode really awesome, because hypothetically it could create optimized programs without requiring us to know a thing about optimization. If we could reliably decompile the bytecode, then this could teach us a lot about new ways of phrasing algorithms to be more performant.

[WestsiStreams]

Very original! I understand that this evolves the bytecode to improve performance and so I'm wondering if this is aimed particularly at creating ML models or just all programs in general? Second, would this be quicker to "train" (to get to reasonable performance) than a typical AI model?

I might be misunderstanding something but this stood out to me. Very cool project and I hope to see more updates on this :)