Author: Don Dailey
Date: 21:52:30 01/07/99
Go up one level in this thread
> >I hear what you are saying, but I tend to feel that more people often > >just get in the way. Most projects, even great big ones tend to be > >the result of a single vision, often by a single person who is able > >to inspire the team. When a project requires huge amounts of manpower, > >then numbers really count, such as building a new O/S. If I was a > >millionaire and could hire any number of people to write the strongest > >possible chess program, I think what I would probably do is hire > >many people and let them work independantly and under their OWN ideas > >and inspiration. Then I would take the strongest one. It's a case > >of 2 heads are not really better than one! > > Actually, 2 heads are almost always better than one. This has been proven. To > illustrate it, years ago a quality team at a company I was working at got the > quality team (8 of us) and about a dozen high level managers together to take > the Artic Survival Test. Lowest score is best. I had a score of 24. The next > best score was 63 out of 19 people (which says a lot about the decision making > ability of management, but we won't go there). The second part of the test is to > have everyone take the test together (this is done before any scoring on the > first part of the test). The score dropped to 15. I'm sure you are a good team player and were impressed by this demonstration staged by your company. But I agree with you, cooperation can produce better results and is absolutely necessary for big projects where many drones are needed to provide the manpower. But if I wanted help mowing my lawn, which might take me about 5 minutes to do by myself, do you think I would benefit by getting 100 people together to help me? Could I organize this and all the details and get it done in less than 5 minutes? I think not! Computer chess is of course not mowing a lawn, but I believe that a very small team, or even one is by far best if you want good results. I'll go into why I believe this at the end. > My point is that if you get a bunch of people together (good thinkers or not), > you can almost always come up with a better set of ideas than with an > individual. I'm not talking about some kind of think tank for generating ideas. I'm talking about writing a strong chess program. Computer chess is a lot more an engineering excercise than it is sitting around dreaming up great ideas. And how you put these ideas together is where the art is. And when it comes to art, I don't believe there is much strength in numbers. Forgive me, but thats the way I feel about it. > ... Even Bob has said that the good old days were before the commercial > chess programs where you would go to a tournament and everyone would brag on how > they had improved their program from the year before. That sharing of > information is what got Bob and others to the level where they are today (look > at the advantages of the Internet). I think that a lot of people are closed > minded when it comes to their evaluation of how well other people can succeed. But you seem to be one of these people. Your main point seems to be that huge corporations are required to do great things, and that individuals are not capable of genius or accomplishment on their own. I have a different opinion. > A single individual will almost always stagnate after a while without the > stimulous of the ideas from other people. Just look at the middle ages where > people purposely kept apart and advances slowed to a crawl. Who are you arguing with? My point doesn't have anything to do with this. I'm only trying to refute what I consider a fairly naive idea that 20 people are bound to come up with something better than 1. It sounds great on paper and superficially makes sense (20 is bigger than 1!) but is far from clear cut. > >But the strongest evidence is to look at Windows95 itself. It's like > >this huge swiss army knife, not good at anything, but perfectly adequate > >at everthing. It's certainly NOT a work of art, and I can imagine that > >there must have been thousands of ideas tossed around, rejected, argued > >over and eventually voted on and compromises certainly taken. Microsoft > >is not really a software company so much as a marketing company and > >acquirer of software. The approach microsoft would use would be to > >find out who has the best program, and make them an offer. > > You are comparing an OS with a Chess program? There isn't an OS on the planet > that isn't like a huge swiss army knife (although NT and Next were designed > fairly well). They are SO complex and SO large that it seems unlikely that > anyone will ever get the resources together ever again to create a new one (does > anyone see Pink going anywhere?). This is one of those statements that you will be embarassed to admit to saying in 20 years! I remember it being thought that 640K was overdesigning the PC and that no one would ever use this much memory. I don't think it makes too much sense trying to predict the computer future unless you really want to embarass yourself. I personally am hoping something really strong, better than windows and even linux will come along. I have yet to feel very satisfied with user interfaces and OS's, and can't help but think there must be a much better mouse trap. I hope there are a few others who are not willing to lay down and die but think the same way I do. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for microsoft to do it, but I would welcome this if they did and would buy it. They just haven't and it is extremely unlikely that they will. > Microsoft did not acquire NT (nor Windows 95). They acquired the services of OS > engineers from other companies (such as Cutler) to create it. Yes, some of the > ideas (and even some small portions of some of the code) have come from other > companies (via their ex-employees), but the largest portion of NT was created by > Microsoft. Windows is big and complex. Of course it took huge amounts of manpower and organization. > This concept of "Microsoft buys everything" is vastly distorted. Acquistion is a > great way to get into a niche market, but it does not guarantee success all on > it's own. That takes work. > > KarinsDad I think microsoft probably has a lot of innovative people, but as a company they are not innovative. Their big thing is not innovation but just getting their products into everyones homes and their hands into everyones pockets. This is good business and what they do best. They are aggressive, but very conservative and everything they do is calculated and controlled. There will be no innovation or risk comming from them, that's not what they do. Probably some guy working in his basement will come up with the next OS innovation. - Don P.S. How would you get a dream team of computer chess programmers together to write the very strongest chess program ever? Let's say we took Fritz programmer Frans, Rebel programmer Ed, Genius program Richard, Junior programmer Amir and others of their calibre. And we decided to pay them 1 million dollars each if they produced something 150 rating points better than the very best of the bunch and gave them 12 months to do it. How would you organize such an effort? First of all, they would be motivated by the 1 million dollars to share their ideas freely (I assume, unless they are already rich or are not motivated by money which is also possible.) Presumably, they would just go crazy playing off of each others brilliance and inspiring one another to greatness. But then they would have to start writing code. If Bob Hyatt was in the group, he might argue for using the bit board approach. But most of the other programmers would not find this very friendly to their particular approach and would have to adapt, or tell Bob he cannot have his way. After comming to some mutual agreement (which has a definite chance of not being the optimum decision but might be) you will get to the issue of speed vs evaluation. Franz will argue strongly for tremendous speed and tight code, but perhaps Ed will find this distasteful or too compromising of the programs evaluation potential and will argue for more chess knowledge. Some compromise will be chosen and one or both will feel that the ultimate strength of the program has been compromised. Issues of using null move for the selectivity will cause an argument between Bob and Ed, and maybe Richard will argue strongly for his approach which no one understands but himself. Amir will argue for making positional decisions at internal nodes but Bob will hate what this does to the hash tables or how he believes it affects positional play and will argue for dynamic evaluation at the end nodes only. They of course will all have their particular bag of tricks which may or may not integrate with the whole project very well. No doubt this will cause a great deal of wasted energy figuring this out and probably a few more bad decisions will be made to spare someones feelings. Then we will get into the choice of language. Franz and Richard know that assembly language is the only way to go. But this may only be something that they are very comfortable with. Someone will argue that this will inhibit the ability of the group to work together, so this sacrafice will have to be made for the good of the whole in the spirit of cooperation. Franz will know that an important compromise has been made, but of course the others might feel less useful to the group if assembly is chosen, either because they are not as proficient at it, or simply that they feel expression of their coding ideas is more important given the nature of the project. Perhaps most of the programmers will go along with the group decisions, but will feel that mistakes have been made along the way and secretly will feel that they could do a better job on their own, especially after being armed with a couple of juicy secrets that they have learned from the others. The end result, is that this project is unlikely to produce something even as strong as the best of the bunch. If these guys get really smart, they will share all their ideas, but write their own programs and constantly challenge each other and have internal competitions among themselves. There will be no shortage of ideas, but it will not come down to having lots of ideas, it will come down to picking and choosing the best ideas and integrating them into a single program and doing the engineering part right. But in a year's time, most of these programmers would have made some progress anyway on their own. Assuming they manage to come up with something somewhat better, you will have to ask yourself if it wouldn't have happened anyway with individual efforts? I'm not saying that it's not possible for them to succeed, these ideas in fact could magically come together if the right chemistry is there, and if in one way or another, the proper leadership is applied. If one of these guys emerge to become the defacto leader, which usually happens in a group to one extent or another, and this person has the humility and genius to recognize the best ideas from each and the group respects his leadership enough to let him direct this effort, then there is a good chance something good will happen. But I'm kind of skeptical, being a chess programmer and knowing many chess programmers. Most of them are great guys, but also most of them are fiercly independent and individual thinkers, and I'm not sure they are at their best implementing someone elses vision of how a chess program should be written. The one fact that most of you chess programmers will have noticed, is that no two programs are very much alike. It's amazing how individualistic each piece of code really is. And that is why I say it is an art. No two artists are going to paint the same picture and the thought of it would not inspire them too much. Let's not even talk about what would happen if you gave this project to a buch of microsoft guys who know little or nothing about computer chess! In fact, the very thought microsoft trying to take over computer chess turns my stomach! But if they wanted to, what they would do is simply buy up chessbase, Rebel or whoever caught their fancy. Perhaps they would simply hire some of these guys. This is not particularly innovative, but it would be the most conservative and effective way for them to get what they want and that is how it would work. They would hire their own guys to do some gaudy interface, put their name on the box and have a best seller. - Don
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