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Subject: Re: How much of a Genius must one be to create a 2400+ Program

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 23:48:36 04/26/00

Go up one level in this thread


On April 27, 2000 at 02:31:19, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>On April 26, 2000 at 18:29:19, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>On April 26, 2000 at 15:10:31, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>
>>>On April 26, 2000 at 11:18:10, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>>>
>>>>On April 26, 2000 at 03:59:17, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On top of that, you have to know about alpha-beta. I have met a number of CS
>>>>>grads who remember that minmax/alpha-beta is an algorithm but can't remember
>>>>>what it's used for, much less how to implement it. And I'm sure that even the
>>>>>best AI classes would not cover stuff like quiescence searches.
>>>>
>>>>Quiescence search was discussed in the initial AI class that I took back during
>>>>my undergraduate program.  The professor wasn't a games person, but it was
>>>>discussed during the section of the course on game-tree search.
>>>
>>>My bad, then.
>>>
>>>The AI classes at schools that I know about are almost all devoted to neural
>>>networks and genetic algorithms and so forth. Very little about tree searching.
>>>So, depends on which school you go to.
>>>
>>>-Tom
>>
>>You definitely have a point, though.  I was lucky that even though the fellow I
>>took my AI course from was into symbolic reasoning, he felt that the concept of
>>"search" was fundamental to AI, so quite a bit of the intro to AI course was
>>devoted to search.  I can totally imagine some other professors doing some NN or
>>GA or belief networks or whatever, and skipping search completely.  In fact, the
>>professor the next year (a different one than who taught me) did exactly that,
>>and boy were some of my friends bummed out!
>>
>>I've taken just 2 official "AI" courses: the intro, then a grad course
>>specifically on Heuristic Search, so overall I've been rather happy with my AI
>>courses. :)  I've also TAed lisp and prolog though, so I suppose I haven't
>>completely ignored 'other' AI.
>>
>>Dave
>
>Computer programming is like playing the harmonica:
>
>1) If you don't have any interest in playing the harmonica, music school won't
>help.
>2) If you want to play the harmonica, you can get very good at it without going
>to music school.  Perhaps you'll get even better if you go to school.
>
>Tom is talking about CS courses but he wrote Stobor while he was in high school.
>
>I took about a year of CS in college and flunked about half of it.
>
>bruce

Yeah, I'm not even doing CS, but I have helped teach/TA some CS classes, and I
know a number of CS people at different schools.

-Tom



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