I've been playing around with Rust for a few weekends just to see what all the hacker hype is about. I haven't done a math post in a minute, so I wanted to use this small project as an exploration of mathematical visual arts.

Tangentially, there's an amazing PBS Nova documentary about Fractals - Hunting the Hidden Dimension. If you haven't watched it already, do it NOW! (WARNING: May induce wook-like philosophies)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_landscape

I love fractals. They are the most intriguing shapes which can represent very natural phenomena. Every snowflake is a unique fractal. Mountain ranges are landscape fractals with infinite triangles. Rainforests -> trees -> tree roots -> branches -> stems -> leafs represent a natural fractal ecosystem. Extending this analogy to space, a planet -> lunar system -> solar system -> globular cluster -> galaxy -> cosmic web form a fractal universe. Watch this incredible Youtube video visualize our entire human experience as an isomorphic fractal structure to the universe and the quarks that make up our known existence.

In mathematical terms, fractals are shapes with non-integer dimensions, infinite length arounds its edges, and self-similar. This means one can infinitely zoom in or out of a fractal, and the fractal will still retain the exact same pattern.

Fractals were largely ignored in the mathematical community UNTIL they could be visualized by the power of computer graphics (shoutout Benoit Mandelbrot). Today, we see fractals in a plethora of digital art, design, and visual performance tools: see Electric Sheep or go attend any electronic music show with a projector.

Mandelbrot Set Fractal Properties

On March 1, 1980, Mandelbrot created the first visualization of the Mandelbrot Set on an IBM computer. I wanted to recreate this moment using modern computer languages.

A Mandelbrot Set is a set of complex numbers C that are bound and do not diverge from the recursive function f(z+1) = z^2 + C when iterated from z = 0.

To accomplish this, I wrote a concurrent image output Rust program which leveraged all 4 of my CPU cores by splitting the rendering output work among 8 threads by pixel row. I then iterated through the set of Complex numbers and determined which numbers did not recursively diverge from the function listed above.

Here are my initial thoughts of working with Rust:

1. The language itself is like a combination of C++, JavaScript, and OCaml. I really enjoyed working with the success and error handlers of the language.
2. The syntax is also NOT human readable at first glance - there is an unmistakable learning curve to this language.
3. The cargo packaging system for Rust is simply amazing. I was easily able to add Complex numbers and concurrency to my program with a few import statements (I secretly wish Golang had a halfway decent package management system).
4. Sublime Text really struggles with displaying the compiler errors in the code editor. This is the exact reason why I switched to bindings-packed VSCode.
5. Documenting and writing test cases using /// and #[test] are extremely intuitive and forces you to write quality code.
6. Rust is unbelievably fast.

Anyway, here's my super detailed 8000x6000 grayscale Mandelbrot Set. If you look close enough, you'll see even more miniature Mandelbrot Sets :).