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Subject: Re: Symbolic: A doomed effort, or it's time to get my lead-lined jockstr

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 03:50:43 02/17/04

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On February 17, 2004 at 04:24:06, martin fierz wrote:

>yes, of course. but when some people write how fast you can write programs in
>lisp, and that that is the main advantage over C, then i simply have to state
>that the only lisp-chessprogram i know of is *not* at all looking like a fast
>development. it seems that whatever steven wants to do, he cannot do very
>quickly with standard lisp.

That's true.  The point is that he probably wouldn't have been able to
do it at all in C.

Where Lisp really shines is when you don't have a clearly defined
algorithm to implement, but rather want to experiment in order to
find an algorithm to solve a problem with no known solution (or when
the problem itself is not clearly defined).

You are right that writing a conventional chess program is not the type
of task for which Lisp offers any tremendous advantages compared to C.
Chess programming mostly consists of implementing simple and well known
algorithms as efficiently as possible.  And as you say, most of the time
is spent testing rather than coding anyway.

If you want to experiment with entirely new and revolutionary search
ideas unrelated to alpha beta and all other familiar algorithms, it is
a good idea to use Lisp (or some other high-level language).  When you
have something that works, you can consider porting it back to C.

Tord



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