Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 08:55:45 11/13/02
[Prompted by Windows vs Linux threads.] Some people do their chess programming in Visual Basic, and it would be no surprise if their chess programs were slow when compared to those programmed in C or C++. The use of FORTRAN as a programming language, for creating chess engines, seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. Presumably for good reasons. Someone once said here, at CCC, that choice of programming language is mostly a matter of personal preference: "If someone learns C before anything else, they will prefer programming in C simply because they feel more comfortable in C." And yet, with the pressure to produce the highest rated chess engine, it would seem that programmers would select "the very best" language [and the very best computer] if they were able to use that language. If it is true that "the Fritz people" [F.M.?] use assembly language to avoid "optimizers," then maybe that is the best language of all, other than machine language. [Of course, no one would use maching language! : ) ] A person who spends all day at work using a particular computer will wish to program their chess engines in the language they use at work. That is understandable, especially if they wish to produce a chess engine to use on their "work computer" during breaks at work. But isn't there a penalty for doing that? In other words, doesn't that mean that the chess engine may not be as fast as it could have been otherwise? Since choice of language pretty much dictates the compilers, then it seems that one would chose languages which do not require inferior compilers. Maybe Linux is a poor choice of language for just that reason? Bob D.
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