This is a Turing machine visualizer designed for learning through visual thinking and creative exploration.
My modifications allow you to run multitape TMs. It, in turn allows you to run a 3-tape universal TM and demostrate how Shannon's transformations work.
You can also write code for a regular TM and transform it for a universal TM or transform according to the Shannon's theorem to explore how they works.
Machines are described in a simple YAML-based format. As you code, each save updates the state diagram; this offers the speed and directness of code, combined with the visual intuitiveness of a graphical editor.
Multiple example machines are provided, each one with commentary that touches on concepts like subroutines and inductive definitions / recursion. Many examples include exercises that build on the machines and deepen understanding. To encourage experimentation, the document system provides for quick snapshots and autosaving to browser local storage.
All in all, this is the simulator I wish I had when taking automata theory. At the same time, I’ve tried to make it accessible to people who aren’t in computer science, or haven’t heard of a Turing machine before.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions, comments, or feedback in general about the project. Bug reports and feature requests are also welcome on the issue tracker. Some known issues and ideas for improvement are outlined on the wiki.
If you want to work on the site itself, here’s how to get started:
Clone the repo and run npm install in the folder. Afterwards, use npm start to host the site locally on a webpack server, by default at localhost:8080.
npm run depgraph or depgraph-noext (requires madge and Graphviz) produces
a visual dependency graph that’s good for getting a feel for the code layout.
Thanks go to the authors of the following runtime dependencies:
- Ace code editor
- bluebird.js cancellable promises
- Bootstrap with the lumen theme
- clipboard.js one-click copy to clipboard
- D3 visualization and DOM manipulation library
- jQuery
- js-yaml parser & serializer
- lodash and lodash/fp utilities