It seemed like there were numerous versions of this, but LifeGenesis from Microsoft entertainment Pack was the one I remember playing the most

https://games.zerker.ca/GameDetails/LifeGenesis_Windows%203....

Thank you! I remebered I had played this as a child on Windows 3.x

Game of Life was everywhere in the eighties. Numerous computer magazine articles and type-ins were published. There was an implementation of it for practically everything.

I once programmed Game of Life for an Amiga bootblock. During the late eighties and early nineties, writing small bootblock intros was a popular hobby.

Bootblock is also where a lot of viruses lived.

Has anyone ever seen a version of the game of life that's actually a playable "game" - that's fun and not just an interesting simulation? I would love to try it.

Either the one from Microsoft or another from that era had multiple colors of cells, and an option to play competitively where before each generation you could add one cell of your color. Whether it was actually "fun" is another question.

I am not too familiar with Windows development in the 16-bit era, so I do not understand what Raiter means when he writes that he “de-Petzoldized” the code. I thought Petzold’s work on documenting the Windows API was foundational. Was it the style?

Yes, Petzold's examples used a certain style to illustrate the use of the Windows API as clearly as possible. Petzold programs would have a giant switch statement handling WndProc messages, state would be held in tons of global variables, and everything crammed in to one huge file. Great for showing a concept and demonstrating how something works, not so good for developing a maintainable, reliable piece of software.

Thank you!

Man, that reminds me that as a kid I coded the game of life into Excel with a bunch of nested IF statements. It was a small field, but still a lot of fun

My wife once did the same in VisualBasic. The cells were buttons. Small but fun.

Microsoft QuickC came with LIFE.C as a sample program. For DOS, although it would obviously run under Windows.