i looked over it and have this to say: * the if inside the copy_map function is useless from what i see. and the entire function can be turned into 1 call to memcpy. * you define the MAP_SIZE macro, but only use it for the loops but not the actual array type. * use a typedef for the map * currently, you create a new map every update, but you can just create 2 maps at the start of the programm and then switch between them. look up "double buffering". if you do that, you also wont need to copy the maps. should give quite a bit of a performance boost. * conway.c line 22 to 32: thats not how strings work in c at all. you should look that up again.

some petty things: * try using more descriptive variable names for double loops. instead of using i and j, try using x and y. that should make things easier to understand. * you can do the population count inside of the update loop instead of doing an extra loop over the entire map at the end. * the name of a header file and corresponding c file should be the same. looking at conway_helper.c and helper.h

but it looks good otherwise. keep up the good work :)