Author: Dan Homan
Date: 05:47:55 08/10/00
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On August 10, 2000 at 00:40:46, Adrien Regimbald wrote: >As to learning how to program by making a chess program: I would urge caution >here - I learnt how to program myself by writing a chess program. Writing a >chess program was my whole reason for learning how to program, and after reading >a few short lessons on the basics of C, I basically dived into writing Faile >immediately, and eventually bought a textbook for a C reference where I looked >things up as I needed them. I don't want to discourage you, but I think I had a >fair bit of natural ability in this, otherwise I'd have failed miserably. I >know some very experienced programmers who could never write a chess program if >their life depended on it, and I know some who've tried and failed at it. > I certianly agree that not having prior programming experience would make writing a chess program quite challenging. However, I am really surprised by your last statement. Do you really know experienced programmers who couldn't write a chess program or who actually failed at writing one? Are you sure that it was something that was important to them and that they made a real effort at it? Basic chess programming is just not that hard, especially with all the help that is available online and in books. As long as someone can reason the logic of generating moves, they can write a chess program. I think that anyone with programming experience can do this if they want to. I certainly think it can get complex, but complex things are just a bunch of simple things put together and programmers are used to dealing with that. Getting a program to play strongly is another matter, but good advice for this is available all over the place. Indeed it is a *lot* of work to make any program and especially one that plays pretty strongly. Making a top program requires even greater efforts and time investments. At that stage, someone can't simply follow the advice of others but strike out on their own. I think this is where the real difficult stuff begins, but I don't know as I am not at that stage yet. - Dan
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