Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 15:58:35 05/26/98
Dear Don: Clearly we are talking of different things, but that confusion has been useful as much as on the ground of your post I have been made some about this entire issue and get some conclusions I believe are worthy of your attention. In the first place, let me ensure you I have not the intention to stop nothing, to hinder creativity in chess and programming skills, etc. Why should I? I have not vested interest of any sort, including in the concept a supposed stubborn adherence to some doctrine about what is good, fair or desirable in this field. Of course not to have intentions is not enough; I could be stopping progress -in he degree just a customer can do that- just because of wrong ideas, so I will explain these a little more. Please, be patient with me: Maybe my expression “platform” suggested something that I did not intend to mean: as far as I know, platform is a concept that involves entire different class of operative systems and his respective hardware peripheries. Well,tehn, no; I was talking of just the same platform with somewhat different amounts of memory and speed, not more. I am sure than in this level, by example, comparing a P133 with a P200, you cannot talk anymore of different platforms, but of the same basic platform with different performances. And if you accept this, you will accept that the fact that a program is running in the fast one does not speak of a previous creative effort from the programmer to make the program run there. Even Colossus X vintage programs can run in P133 or 200 although they were created for XT machines. So, if you make a tournament between Colossus running in P200 and, by example, Mychess by Kittinger of a similar era running in a XT, I am sure you would not say “hey, let Colossus make good of the creative capability of Martin Bryant to do it capable of using the better hardware”. Why? Because there is there something arbitrary; the same could be Mychess running in the faster machine. In short, there is a difference between a program developed and fitted to run in a determinate hardware AND the random fact that a program is put in this or that machine in a competition. In other words, IF a program is so made that only can run at full steam with, let us say, Alpha 600 Mhz, wonderful; that’s the hardware the program must use. We are going, then, to congratulate the programmer and we’ll see another further step in the development of this field such as you want and I want. But if a program that is prepared tu run normally in a p-200 is run in the same Alpha just to get a kick from a faster processor, then the situation is the same of a human athlete that goes to the race camp with a dose of chemical in his blood to get a supreme effort beyond his normal capabilities. You see, mine is, I believe, a fair position: I don’t blame programmer that produces more sophisticated programs hungry of more complex system, on the contrary, that is in favour o my interest and pleasure; at the same time, I cannot accept as fair if a program is put in steroids above and beyond what is normal in her performance. And what is normal? Is normal that was clearly stablished in the box where the programs comes. If you beyond that precisely to get the most in a competition we are very clearly not looking a further step in nothing, but just an unfair step from equal conditions -to measure software progress, not to stop nothing- to commercial benefit. I hope that my point now is clear. Maybe wrong, but clear. Truly yours Fernando
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