Here's food for thought:
One of the more intriguing types of algorithm is the genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic Darwinian natural selection, where "fitness" selects individuals for survival, breeding, and, hence, adaptive mutation. "
" covered the background on this, and provided two Perl implementations, one that bred bytes and another that bred words. This follow-up article( "
" ) expands this idea of Perl evolution with more advanced material on genetic algorithms.