Author: Daniel Clausen
Date: 09:39:52 02/17/04
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On February 17, 2004 at 10:55:42, Robert Hyatt wrote: [snip] >>In which area a certain chess engine belongs to is not at all clear. Depending >>on your goals it may very well be a good idea to use a high-level language and >>therefore have more time to test lots of new ideas than implementing it in C >>and be somewhat less flexible. > >I won't disagree. But once I get the ideas firmed up, lower-level-language >here I come. Because then I want speed... Well, it depends on what you mean with "ideas firmed up". The moment you go to a lower-level-language (say Asm, to be extreme) you won't have the possibility to ever change big parts of your ideas later on. (w/o having lots of work or simply start with a new engine) Depending on your goals that may be OK. And for commercial engines it's probably needed in order to be on the very top of the list. But w/o basically starting a new engine, I don't think you can ever come up with something drastically different afterwards. Depends on your goals. I think Edwards aim is not to win the coming CCT7 but investigate computer-chess in a direction where not many people went yet. >A good question: "why do you suppose nearly _all_ current programs are written >in C? (the only exception I can point to for a successful program was Cray >Blitz which was fortran)???" Answer -> performance. That's probably true, I agree. It doesn't mean though, that if some of the guys would have used another language and would have had more time to develop others ideas, the missing 50-100 ELOs from lack of speed would be regained again. Maybe even more. :) >A few have even gone all >the way to assembly (Older Fritz versions for example). Again for performance. >Not because they like asm programming. Well, it seems the Fritz team switched from Asm to something else. (probably C) Sounds like a stupid idea to me! Afterall they lose speed! ;) There were obviously more important issues, why they decided to switch. Likewise, I can see chess programmers, who think that _for them_ it's better to make yet another step and go to a high-level language. I guess our POVs are not as far away as it seems to me. :) On a larger scale: If I understood you correctly (in other posts) you POV is that mini-maxing will always be the heart of a chess engine. I think that too to a certain degree, but I can imagine that it's possible to develop a chess engine which uses the mini-maxing more as a 'verifier' whether the engine-developed plan works tactically or not. So it still would be an important part of the engine, but not its heart. (more later, but I have to run to the train!) Sargon
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