Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 01:48:54 05/25/01
Go up one level in this thread
On May 25, 2001 at 04:37:06, Graham Laight wrote:
>On May 25, 2001 at 04:22:37, Graham Laight wrote:
>
>>America probably took the lead in the sixties because they were rich enough to
>>allow their students/professors to do chess programs on expensive machines in
>>universities.
>>
>>Now that computers are cheap and common, the Dutch are ruling the world - and by
>>a country mile!
>>
>>The Dutch people absolutely love mind games - chess programming suits their
>>national character down to the ground.
>
>Just to expand this point a bit further: the Netherlands is a small country
>whose culture is a mixture of all the countries around them.
>
>The combination which seems to make them lethal competitors is computer chess is
>that they seem to have some British inventiveness, and enough of the German
>ability to be methodical, that allows Germans to be so good at testing something
>over and over, making slight variations each time, and collating the results,
>that makes Germans competitive in the area of quality.
>
>Chess programming seems to have followed the route one would expect from any
>product:
>
>* the Americans are 1st, because they are the richest country, and can more
>easily afford (and are more willing to buy) new products in their embryonic
>stage. In Computer Chess (CC) this was the sixties/seventies
>
>* the British are 2nd, because once new ideas are out, their inventiveness
>allows them to improvise with the product, and either come up with new ideas, or
>recombine the existing ideas to rapidly improve the product. In CC, this was the
>mid eighties to the mid nineties
>
>* next will be countries like Holland, which combine British and German
>strengths. In CC, this is the current time
>
>* finally will be the Germans. When improvisation is no longer making rapid
>advances in the product, the methodical Germans will be the ones who'll be
>willing to keep testing testing testing and advance the product inch by inch
>beyond the competitors. In CC, this will be Chessbase taking over the entire
>sport.
* last stage is small but sunny islands all over the globe. Programmers can
settle there and get more quality of life, stay isolated from modern life
madness, while keeping in touch with the rest of the world thru the Internet. It
works.
Christophe ;)
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