Author: Dan Homan
Date: 05:22:23 08/11/00
Go up one level in this thread
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 I don't know any programmers who aren't capable of these things. I think the necessary assets are interest and determination. Natural ability is not very important, unless we are talking about creating a top program. This is just my opinion, of course. - Dan
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.