Author: Christopher R. Dorr
Date: 07:21:59 01/06/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 05, 1999 at 20:29:57, KarinsDad wrote: >On January 05, 1999 at 19:35:23, Eugene Nalimov wrote: > >[snip] > >>>I agree that collaboration is very important. But which do you think is going to >>>produce the better outcome: two world-class leaders in the field (with vast >>>amounts of prior experience and education in the field between them) or one team >>>leader, and 50 fantastic programmers, who know *nothing* about chess >>>programming? >> >>Why do you think that optimal group will be "1 leader + 50 fantastic >>programmers"? I'd suggest something like "1 leader + 2 grandmasters + >>5-7 fantasic programmers + 5 very good testers + 1 specialist on >>particular CPU architecture + 1-2 administrators + 2 fast computers >>per developer + lot of *very fast* test computers". And I'm reasonable >>sure that such a team will produce much better results than team that >>consist of just 2 leaders. >> >>Eugene > >Chris, > >I agree with Eugene. Obviously, "50 fantastic programmers, who know *nothing* >about chess programming" isn't going to cut the mustard. > >Hence, you would use a sophisticated team of computer software developers >including testers, technical writers, managers, accountants (well, maybe one >accountant), researchers, reverse engineering specialists, AI experts, chess >programming experts, and possibly a few of us grunts who are really interested >in it (plus a bunch of people I neglected to mention). > >Well, I have to go to the chess club. :) Darn! > >KarinsDad Can we toss in a couple of lawyers?! I know a couple of them that I'd love to send to Seattle for while. :) Seriously, though, I'm not disagreeing that MS could make things better. The could make interfaces much better, opening book editors much better, databases much better and easier to use. But my issue here is more about the role of large-team based software engineering and a project like chess programming. I simply disagree with the quoted MS manager who said that MS could easily and significantly 'blow away' what currently exists. I don't think that a large team (as talented as they might be) would advance the state of the art to any large degree simply because of the nature of the task. I don't think that chess programming lends itself to the necessary partitioning that would benefit from having a large team work on it. I believe that a program like a chess program (or a specialized modeling program, etc. ) is fundamentally different from a large application. It's inconceivable that a single programmer could put together a world-class word processor or spreadsheet today. No one person can write a million lines of code in a reaonable amount of time. But a chess program? Crafty is world-class, and it's source fits on a single disk. How would a team of programmers be any more efficient than Bob by himself? The code doesn't partialize out well. Of course he could benefit from a full-time GM, or a tech writer, but I feel that a single person (or *very* small team) would be at more efficient in producing the core functions than a large team. To me, it's just the nature of the beast. Chris
This page took 0.01 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.