Hofstadter’s FIGURE-FIGURE Sequences
December 1, 2015
I had too much Thanksgiving; more specifically, the stuffing went bad, and I’ve felt poorly the last few days. In between trips to the bathroom, I picked up my copy of Hofstadter’s GEB and looked again at the FIGURE-FIGURE sequences of Chapter III:
1, 3, 7, 12, 18, 26, 35, 45, 56, 69, …
and
2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, …
where the two sequences together contain each of the natural numbers exactly once and the second sequence comprises the differences between the numbers in the first sequence. I love that book; in probably a dozen attempts, I am probably about 5% of the way to the enlightenment it offers.
Your task is to write programs that generate the two sequences. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.
Programming Praxis 