Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:47:38 09/06/00
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On September 06, 2000 at 04:12:54, Uri Blass wrote: >On September 06, 2000 at 01:28:40, Ed Schröder wrote: ><snipped> >>And for postings like these you want to be paid? >> >>Ed > >No. > >I wanted only to make clear that in the previous case that I did not have a >significant influence on the program in order not to give a wrong impression. > >I do not expect a program to use all my ideas but I believe that I can be more >productive with another program. > >Reasons: >1)I have more ideas today. >2)There are programmers who are less busy in other things and can reply more >often and give a feedback. > >Uri I would offer two comments here. 1. You would obviously make a valuable contribution to any program. You aren't a computer chess programmer, per se, but you are an excellent chess player that understands computer chess, which _really_ makes your advice more useful. 2. The concept of beta testing varies. I have beta tested many things. Hardware, software, etc. In every case, I was offered something for my trouble. IE I beta tested Megahertz modems for a long time. The perk was that they gave me a production version of the modem(s) I tested. In the case of "crafty" things are different, since I don't sell it at all, so there is no "money" to offer anybody. And since the latest versions are always available, there is no perk there either. But don't think that your advice goes ignored. At least in my case it doesn't. I can think of two things you nagged about until I fixed them. One was the promotion tablebase issue. The second was the recent +.01 / -.01 / .00 scores in tablebase endings that are drawn, where +.01 means crafty is material ahead but drawn, vs -.01 means it is material behind but drawn. I suspect others "listen" to you whether they give you credit for the ideas or not. Chess programmers are 'glory hounds' by nature. Because most of what they do is public competition where they want to win. However, it is possible to give credit where credit is due also. Just read the comments in main.c in Crafty and you will see all the contributors and what they offered (the .01 stuff is in the current version which is not yet out, but will be out this week). The one thing I would not do is ask someone to beta test for nothing, and then give them a list of things to carefully test. I think that leaves a huge credibility gap...
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