I will briefly recap the motivation for, and progress towards, numerical modeling of the formation and evolution of the galaxy population – from cosmological initial conditions at early epochs through to the present day. I will focus in particular on the EAGLE simulations. They represent a significant development in this arena, since they broadly reproduce key properties of the evolving galaxy population, and do so using energetically-feasible feedback mechanisms. I shall present a broad range of results derived from EAGLE analyses, concerning the evolution of galaxy masses, their luminosities and colours, and their atomic and molecular gas content. I hope to convey some of the strengths and limitations of the current generation of numerical models.