[pohl]

It didn't sound to me like the please-wait screen presented any development difficulty.

Rather, it seems like it presented a design conundrum, to which the developer paid great attention before making a difficult decision to scrap the cellular automata idea that he was in love with.

[siglesias]

Right. The hardest part was admitting the design was flawed and getting help to make something better. The technical issues, aside from some memory management bugs early on, could be solved in an evening.