Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Just learning capability?

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 08:54:38 06/14/00

Go up one level in this thread


On June 13, 2000 at 19:57:39, Mogens Larsen wrote:

>On June 13, 2000 at 19:18:45, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>> And even the opening database data (while - admittedly - more important than
>>endgame tablebase data) is not the achilles' heel.  If you want to strike at the
>>heart of a chess program, simply remove the data from the eval function.  Now
>>we'll see who plays crappy chess.  Essentially, what you will have is my
>>retarded move generator chess program.  The GM's won't have much problem with
>>that, but neither will anyone else for that matter.
>
>You still don't get it. It's not a question of crippling a chess program, not as
>far as I'm concerned, and it involves other considerations than the simple ones
>you present. Of course a human brain is responsible for the code involved in a
>chess program and the same thing applies for opening books and endgames tables,
>so it has no bearing on the discussion at hand whatsoever. Opening books and
>endgame tables are simply not a product of the programmer and rarely something
>produced by the program itself. A chess program should play chess on its own
>terms, not through more or less random exterior additions and attachments. You
>might say it's a question of existentialism. What constitutes a genuine computer
>chess program?
>
>Best wishes...
>Mogens

This is getting old.

"Opening books and endgame tables are simply not a product of the programmer and
rarely something produced by the program itself."

RAM is not a product of the programmer and rarely something produced by the
program itself.

Hard Disks are not a product of the programmer and rarely something produced by
the program itself.

The rules of the game are not a product of the programmer and rarely something
produced by the program itself.

EGTBs and the operating system are not products of the programmer and rarely
something produced by the program itself.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I have a BUNCH of tables in my code that I wrote separate programs to generate
since it is a pain in the butt to generate a 4K table by hand. I did not create
them by hand, but I still created them.

Every aspect of a computer program is put there by the programmer. Where the
programmer acquires a piece of software, hardware, or data is irrelevent. It was
the PROGRAMMER who put it all together and came up with the overall package.

Not some random GM from 80 years ago who played a game. Not the customers. Not
you. Not me.

THE PROGRAMMER.

Who gives a rat's rear end how he put together his program. The two important
things for most people are:

1) What features does the program have?

2) How well does the program play chess?

Now, these two can be segregated further such as elements of the GUI, does the
program play a strong endgame, etc. But, the bottom line is that it does not
matter much what elements make up the internals of a program. A given program is
what it is and talking about whether it should have external elements such as
opening books and endgame tables (which by the way are no different than the
tables in my code which where generated by an external program) is kind of
silly.

This entire thread is basically ludicrous and just an exercise in jaw movement
(or typing movement, whatever).

KarinsDad :)



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.