Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 10:38:41 03/29/00
Go up one level in this thread
On March 29, 2000 at 05:49:47, Andrew Williams wrote:
>On March 28, 2000 at 21:06:25, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On March 28, 2000 at 11:28:27, Peter Skinner wrote:
>>
>>>I have noticed that quite a few amateur programs other than Crafty have been
>>>kicking the hell out of commercial programs such as Shredder 4, Chess Genius
>>>6.5, and Fritz 5.32, and Junior 6.
>>>
>>>Why is this happening?
>>>
>>>Crafty has always done this, but now Comet, AnMon, LG2000v2000 2.5, and others,
>>>are equally taking them to task.
>>>
>>>This is not really surprising though as most of these programs could easily be
>>>commercial.
>>
>>
>>The difference between amateur and commercial programs is the thousands of hours
>>spend in fixing every little hole in the program.
>>
>>You can, it's true, find some amateur programs that will occasionally beat a
>>commercial program on one game.
>>
>>But if you organize a match between these 2 programs, the picture is really
>>different.
>>
>>The reason is not that the author of the amateur program is not as good as the
>>author of the commercial program.
>>
>>The reason is that the commercial programmer has spent an huge amount of time
>>looking for small problems, and has fixed them.
>>
>>
>
>[SNIP]
>
>>
>>The final result is 9.5-0.5 in favor of the commercial program. Let me say that
>>this commercial product did not impress me at all when I followed the games. I'm
>>not even sure that it justified its incredibly high price of $59.95.
>>
>>
>>
>>OK, this is just a story I imagined. I just want to tell that the commercial
>>programmer is probably not smarter than the author of the amateur program. But
>>every game the commercial has won has been won by very hard work on an
>>incredible number of very small details.
>>
>>That is where the difference is.
>>
>[SNIP]
>
>Very interesting, Christophe. If we had such an award, this would be an early
>contender for Best CCC Post of the Year (IMO of course).
>
>Cheers
>
>Andrew
:)
Thanks. But it's just what happened to me in real life, and probably what
happens to many amateur programmers.
Christophe
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