Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 13:48:54 05/29/02
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On May 28, 2002 at 14:47:17, K. Burcham wrote: > > >I have been curious about what motivates chess programmers. What do they really >want from their creation? I think there are several stages, there has been for me anyway. Stage 1. you love chess and like to program, why not combine the two. you start investigating algorithms, looking through codes etc. It slowly amounts to a simple buggy engine, that will play at at 1100. stage 2. You've made a chessprogram, but it wasn't really very good, and you have a ton of ideas that will make it better. you are still researching because it is not as simples as you first thought and you want it to play a bit better. You rewrite the program with the new ideas and its now a 1400 engine. you are impressed with its play - it found a mate in 4, imagine that. stage 3. you are not happy. people are beating you program left and right and no one can understand that you think you have achieved something great. you want to show them who's boss. You are beginning to understand how an engine should be built, of course your current design sucks and you need to rewrite the whole thing again. stage 4. competition is now beginning to get fun, you engine has beaten another engine you downloaded last night from the internet. it would be cool to have the engines play without user interference so you add winboard support. stage 5. you stumble on CCC on you internet-searches and you discover the exciting world of computerchess. of course you engine is not good enough to brag about - yet, but you have some ideas you want to try... you enter a tournament and get beaten badly by some better engines, you analyze what went wrong and swear it will never happen again, so you fix it. stage 6. your engine is stadily climbing in rating, doing better and better, it has long since become stronger than you, you have lots of ideas you want to try for the next tournament, you will surprise them all with this new and stronger version - fear you some day they will. :) -S.
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