Programming a Machine

Write your own rules

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Programming a Turing machine means designing its rule table.
• The same rules work for inputs of any length.
• Unary arithmetic is easy to implement with a few states.

Steps

1. Flip every bit
2. Counting in unary
3. An adding machine
4. Subtract one
5. Which way?
6. Timing the adder