Author: Christopher R. Dorr
Date: 12:50:51 01/05/99
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On January 05, 1999 at 14:59:05, Eugene Nalimov wrote: >On January 05, 1999 at 14:06:05, Christopher R. Dorr wrote: > >>On January 05, 1999 at 08:13:32, Harald Faber wrote: >> >>>On January 05, 1999 at 03:45:13, Lawrence S. Tamarkin wrote: >>> >>>>I recently met a former Microsoft department head, who is now a chess coach and >>>>using many of the availble playing programs, databases & tutorials. What he >>>>told me I found truly amazing! He said that the currently availble programs >>>>were from a programming point of view rather unsophisticated and trivial in >>>>design. >> >>How could he make such a statement without seeing the source code? I doubt that >>this is indeed the case. the programs that exist today are very sophisticated. >>Perhaps their interfaces leave some things to be desired, but this is a metter >>of personal taste. >> >> >> >> He suggested that if Microsoft (or other large software maker), decided >>>>to get involved in creating these things, the results would (or at least could), >>>>blow away the currently existing things in the marketplace. >>> >> >>Great! Just what we need...MS Chess 2000...requiring a 400 MHz Pentium II, 425 >>MB of disk space, DVD drive, and 128 MB RAM (Minimum requirements). And shipping >>only 3 years after it was promised. >> >>And for what? A program that can beat 99.99999% of the chess playing public >>instead of the 99.9999% that the top programs can beat today? A 3 million game >>database rather than the 1 million games many people have now? More neato chess >>sets like CM6K has (Perhaps Bill Gates as the White King, and Larry Ellison as >>the Black one?!) ? >> >>I doubt that they even could improve the state-of-the-art by very much. If they >>started from scratch, then it would take them at least a couple of years to play >>catch up (regardless of the amount of $$$ you have, you still have to do >>testing, development, more testing, etc.). If they bought a great engine already >>made, then how much would they be able to improve the engine? Good systems >>programmers or application programmers don't necessarily make good chess >>programmers; I think it would take them a while to catch up on the basic theory >>of chess programming, and having 30 novice assistants probably wouldn't help Bob >>Hyatt or Ed Schroeder be a better programmer....just a more annoyed and >>distracted one. >> >>Perhaps on the interface they could help. Perhaps on database features they >>could help (Just think...we could do all of out database queries in SQL! What >>fun!), but overall, I really don't think that they'd really make that much of a >>splash. >> >> >> >> >>>What is amazing in there? Microshit has much more manpower and much more money >>>to develop a strong engine and a fine GUI. >>>The commercial programs (exception Chessmaster) are programmed by only one or 2 >>>persons. They would also not be able to write winword as it is, there are some >>>more people involved. >>>If Ed, Marty or whoever would have more co-programmers there would be a big jump >>>in GUI and in strength. Just look what happened after Ed has co-operated with >>>Christophe. >> >> >>Chris Dorr >>USCF Life Master > >In modern chess programs there are a lot of parts, other than >chess engine itself. And other than GUI. For example, open >book handling, EGTB handling, I/O processing, parsing of the >input, etc. Here good application (or system) programmer can >help a lot. MS also have excellent organization - testing >groups, performance groups, documentation groups. And MS can >hire a grandmaster, who will spend his (her) entire days >working on the program. IMHO, good opening book is much more >important for SSDF rating than improvement in the engine. > >So, I think that MS (or any other large company) can make >chess program that is much stronger than any current commercial >chess program. And I think that MS will never do that - it >lives on mass market products. For mass market, strength of >the current program is more than enough. > >Eugene > >The text above is my personal opinion, not official view of the >Microsoft Corporation. I agree that they would be able to do some things better, but how much improvement in I/O or tablebase handling is needed? Crafty and Winboard have been done (basically) by one person each, and it they handle I/O and EGTB's fine. I haven't seen too many commercial programs lately that need much improvement in parsing user input. I agree that a good opening book would be a benefit, and this they could certainly do, but could they do it better that Rebel, for example? I don't really see how. Jeroen Noomen has worked very hard, and produced a top-notch opening book; perhaps it could be improved, but by how much? How long would it take? Documentation? Absolutely! There a big company could shine. But will they improve the software itself? I really do doubt it; Crafty is already one of the top 10 speed players in the world on fast hardware (at least on ICC, it outrates almost all of the GM's at blitz - I'd take Crafty on a Quad Xeon 450 vs. anyone on earth in a match!). Perhaps another 10 or 20 or 50 points can be squeezed out of the same hardware, but I don't think some kind of 'Manhattan Project' approach is what it will take to accomplish that. I honestly feel that software increases in strength are coming very slowly now; I have a 8 or 10 year old program (Zarkoz 2.61) that can hang with the best commercial programs of today (it loses, but not terribly. I played it against Rebel 8 in a short match, and it lost something like 8-5 or 9-5). The increases that have happened over the last few years have been spurred more by hardware increases than software. This is not to disparage the programmers at all; there have been definite software improvements; but they are not dramatic, and they are more the result of having very good and advanced chess programmers (who have spent *years* studying this particular type of programming) like Bob Hyatt and Ed Schroeder really direct their talents at an extremely high level of sophistication. You can't toss 50 programmers in a room, and expect them to advance on this kind of work by sheer force of numbers, no matter how good they are as programmers. I've done my share of programming, and realize that the general programming skill of a person is often not as important as a deep and advanced understanding of the topic at hand. Yes, the interface might be made better, and yes the databases might become more user-friendly. perhaps the focus could be on tutorials and developing ways to use these programs to train better. But will the program play significantly better than the top programs today? I really do doubt it. Chris Dorr
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