Well this is very possible and @Jivlain correctly points out in his (nice) answer that genetic Programming is what you are looking for (and not simple Genetic Algorithms).
Genetic Programming is a field that has not reached a broad audience yet, partially because of some of the complications @MichaelBorgwardt indicates in his answer. But those are mere complications, it is far from true that this is impossible to do. Research on the topic has been going on for more than 20 years.
Andre Koza is one of the leading researchers on this (have a look at his 1992 work) and he demonstrated as early as 1996 how genetic programming can in some cases outperform naive GAs on some classic computational problems (such as evolving programs for Cellular Automata synchronization).
Here's a good Genetic Programming tutorial from Koza and Poli dated 2003.
Well this is very possible and @Jivlain correctly points out in his (nice) answer that genetic Programming is what you are looking for (and not simple Genetic Algorithms).
Genetic Programming is a field that has not reached a broad audience yet, partially because of some of the complications @MichaelBorgwardt indicates in his answer. But those are mere complications, it is far from true that this is impossible to do. Research on the topic has been going on for more than 20 years.
Andre Koza is one of the leading researchers on this (have a look at his 1992 work) and he demonstrated as early as 1996 how genetic programming can in some cases outperform naive GAs on some classic computational problems (such as evolving programs for Cellular Automata synchronization).
Here's a good Genetic Programming tutorial from Koza and Poli dated 2003.
For a recent reference you might wanna have a look at A field guide to genetic programming (2008).