Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 15:12:42 09/28/03
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On September 28, 2003 at 18:03:44, Mike Byrne wrote: >On September 28, 2003 at 17:57:12, Mike Byrne wrote: > >>On September 28, 2003 at 17:54:08, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: >> >>>On September 28, 2003 at 17:44:48, Mike Byrne wrote: >>> >>>>So any CHESS programmer worth his salt should be able to make their chess >>>>program BETTER than Crafty. >>> >>>Just try it. It's way harder than you think. Hint: the 20 years of programming >>>and testing experience Bob has is something you _don't_ get with the sources. >>> >>>-- >>>GCP >> >> >>I'm not saying it's easy ....by any stretch of the imagination. > >Just to clarify , and prevent this in going from a going in bad direction -- >there are only a few (let's say less than 20, it may be more or less) chess >programmers in the world that have programmed a better chess program than >Crafty. My statement "worth his salt" pertains to those programmmers who >written very strong programs such as yourself that possibly have written a chess >program strong enough to go commerical. Some amatuer programs also fall in that >category. I'm not meaning any disrepect here. "Worth his salt" comes from the mistaken idea that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, not money. And that is the origin of the word "salary." "Salary" does indeed come from the Latin "salarium," which in turn is from "sal" or salt. But "salary" refers to monetary payments to allow the legionaires to buy salt, which was a valuable commodity in the Roman world. They weren't paid in salt itself. Based on this mistaken notion, around 1830 people came up with the expression "not worth his salt," meaning he's not worth what you pay him. I'm using expression to mean chess programmers who are good enough to write a strong chess program worthy of going commercial and that they would be paid for their efforts. There are not many chess programmers who fall into that category and that is the intended meaning of my post.
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