Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 01:48:43 02/14/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 13, 2004 at 20:00:53, Dann Corbit wrote: >On February 13, 2004 at 11:05:45, Uri Blass wrote: > >>On February 13, 2004 at 10:55:11, Tord Romstad wrote: >> >>>On February 13, 2004 at 10:13:26, Peter Fendrich wrote: >>> >>>>I'm quite convinced that the correlation between being a strong chess player and >>>>a strong chess programmer is not very high. It's far more important to be a good >>>>programmer than a good chess player in order to produce a strong chess program. >>> >>>I agree that being a good chess player is not necessary in order to write a >>>strong chess program, but I think that being a good programmer is also not >>>nearly as important as most people believe. I think it is possible to get >>>very far with mediocre programming skills. >>> >> >>The question is what is the definition of being a good programmer. >>You consider yourself as not good programmer but other people may consider you >>as a good programmer. Other people cannot know, because they have never seen my code. A few people will say that I am a competent Lisper, but that is not quite the same. Besides, I didn't claim that I was writing about myself. I was writing about chess programming in general. >I think you must be pretty smart to succeed. It depends on your definition of "succeed", of course. If succeeding means to be competitive with the top commercial programs, I definitely agree with you. If being within 200 points of the best programs is enough, I no longer agree. >If you are not a great programmer >and not a great chess player, those difficulties can be overcome with time and >effort. The amount of effort needed will be proportional to the intelligence of >the programmer. So I think someone with an IQ of 100 could write a good chess >program, but it would take years and years. Someone with an IQ of 150 could >write one much faster (given the same knowledge base and volume of data that had >to be learned). > >It's going to be like any other mental activity. >1. How smart you are >2. How much you already know about chess >3. How much you already know about programming >4. How much effort you apply to the problem and learning domain knowledge > >Are all going to be important. >Someone who is >1. Stupid >2. Ignorant about chess >3. Ignorant about programming >4. Lazy in effort > >Is not going to succeed. > >The most important thing will be to write good algorithms. But you have to have >enough knowledge added so that the program won't play like an idiot. If you >tell your program to do nothing but count wood, 19 plies won't be enough to beat >anyone. You don't need to write any algorithms at all to create a reasonably strong chess program. The published algorithms are sufficient to get quite far. It is correct that you need some chess knowledge, but I think knowledge on the level of a 1500 rated player is enough. All you need is to read a few basic chess books and to implement the known algorithms. Nothing more than ordinary chess and programming skills are required. But it takes lots of work, of course. Tord
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.