Author: Alastair Scott
Date: 04:09:20 09/12/03
Go up one level in this thread
On September 12, 2003 at 06:53:47, stuart taylor wrote: >When a new program comes out, some people can't think of anything more important >than the interface! >Isn't it a bit like thinking only about the face when it comes to a woman? (or >other external features, rather than true qualities) >S.Taylor This is a false analogy because, in the case of chess software, the "true qualities" are inevitably refined to a wonderfully high standard. The engine has become less important (!) because, for 99 per cent of users, it is so overwhelmingly strong it barely matters what it is. Thus the means of using what the engine offers - and, more importantly, watering them down - become much more important. That is a huge turnaround from 10 years ago when engines _were_ differentiable by people like me :) (Similarly with a word processor, for example; nobody cares about facilities such as the word wrapping, hyphenation and font placement algorithms because they "just work", albeit after many years of experimentation and effort to find the best way of doing them, but change a keyboard shortcut or make other arbitrary alterations to the user interface and there will be trouble!). Alastair
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.