Author: José Carlos
Date: 14:48:34 08/10/00
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On August 10, 2000 at 13:47:20, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >On August 10, 2000 at 08:47:55, Dan Homan wrote: > >>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 > >Chess programming is not like normal programming, and I believe it can be very >difficult for people even if they're good programmers otherwise. > >For most programs, it is immediately obvious if the program is working or not. >But a chess program just spits out a lot of numbers and moves and there's >nothing to tell you if it's working right. > >Also, debugging a chess program is difficult because it's an extremely fast and >complicated loop. Finding the exact point of failure and stopping the program at >that point is not easy and it's not something you have to do with normal >programs. > >There are techniques to overcome these problems, but even good programmers may >not think of these techniques. > >-Tom In my opinion: -Writing a stupid chess program is very easy. You only need to know the rules of chess, and ensure the program plays according them. -Writing a weak chess program is easy too. Just put some effort on making the program do logical moves (with some evaluation) and you have a weak program. -Writing a medium-strenght program has taken me about a year, and that was dedicating to it less than an hour a day (in average). And I'm not a good programmer at all. -Writing a strong program takes a lot of time and effort. But it's not difficult itself, it just needs time. -Writing a very strong or elite program is difficult and takes a life. Just my opinion, of course. José C.
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