This is an interesting post, but I think it should have mentioned the point that GoL is a tour-de-force to show off what is possible in the language, but it's not what the language is mostly used for. Most people using J or APL will just be getting some statistics out of large tables of numbers, or simulating something. So it's a little unfair to criticize the language for not being well suited to the problem. It's an extreme example of something well beyond what you would normally see written in that style.