Author: Gerd Isenberg
Date: 14:42:14 12/24/05
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On December 24, 2005 at 10:56:25, Thomas Gaksch wrote: >it is very difficult for me to describe this in english. >first of all i want to clarify, that i always thank fabien for his great program >fruit and everything he did for computer chess. an of course he is a great >programmer and a great person. no doubt about that. i have never said anything >else. i also have never said that i am the great programmer and that toga is >full of new ideas. i have also never said that fruit wouldn´t be as strong as it >is without toga. >i just read the comments from ryan, uri, tord (programmers) and others about >toga and i am very dissapointed from their statements. but i think there are >some facts. >first of all the most important fact is playing strength. >CEGT 40/40 Fruit 2.1 = 2713 ELO >CEGT 40/40 Toga II 1.1 = 2767 ELO >CEGT Blitz Fruit 2.1 = 2703 >CEGT Blitz Toga II 1.1 = 2767 >and if you critizise me that i only wrote 47 lines of code for this improvement >than i think that is not a negative point. not the quantity of lines is >important. >and if you critizise me that i invented nothing new than i can only say that it >is true. why should i invent something really new, if it is possible to improve >fruit with known techniques. >you say that it is so simple what i have done. thats partly true. but believe me >or not i invested a lot of time in testing und finding the right techniques >which improved the playing strenght so much. if everything is so simple and fast >to implement, why hasn´t done it fabien in fruit 2.0 or 2.1? i think fabien >hastn´t done it, because he didn´t believe that these techniques would increase >the playing strength so much. there is absolutely no doubt about it that it >would be easy for him to do that. and it is 100% clear that he never used toga >code in fruit. but i think i showed him the techniques which worked in fruit >very well. so he saved a little bit time in testing this things because he saw >in toga that it will work. >i also said that i would never release a clone if it is not better than his >original. so if ryan writes derogative about toga than i only can say "do it >better". but you release one beta after the other and no beta is really stronger >than toga 1.1. so you see it is not so simple to improve an existing engine like >everybody thinks. >i am absolutely sure that some people will again misunderstand my lines. but >that are the facts about fruit/toga and i would have wished that the people >would also accepted these facts. but it is only a whish. > >merry christmas > >Thomas Hi Thomas, I have no idea whether i would be able to improve fruit as you did. And whether you need to be the "better" programmer for that task ;-) All respect for that improvement - and i agree for playing strenght quality is much more important than quantity. Take the few additional lines from minimax to alfabeta. Or Nullmove. For the users and chess lovers it is great to get such an extraordinary strong engine for free. Competition improves chess programs. Because other amateur and commercial programmers will try to do better. A strong open source program should in principle be good for the community - everybody can try to understand how it works, share and discuss ideas and may try to improve it. My impression is that the question why public fruit or toga are so strong is not that simple to answer - beside rather bug free code there is a whole bunch - search as well as eval. Not like adding a few lines of code for nullmove. A strong open source program implies some conflicts of competetive and commercial interests. Other programmers, like me, working for years on their program - are not so enthusiastic about that development. Since toga is too strong for open source, the only chance to void Fabien's original sin for all competitive programmers is to improve much better than you ;-) Vanity is a serious matter as well. I think you missunderstood the programmers a bit. Defending Fabien does not imply goofing you. IMHO too many trolls are supporting you. Are you willing to discuss programming issues here from time to time when you in the mood? Thanks, Gerd
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