Author: Albert Silver
Date: 19:07:16 11/17/04
Go up one level in this thread
On November 17, 2004 at 21:01:06, Dann Corbit wrote:
>On November 17, 2004 at 20:55:22, Albert Silver wrote:
>[snip]
>>You might consider asking another long-time chess programmer like Ed Schroder or
>>even Bob Hyatt. Not that I think they spend time punching cards on maintenance
>>time as opposed to development time, but still...
>
>I think the hard part will be coming up with accurate figures from any of them.
>
>When you are programming as a hobby, you don't write down all the time you spend
>reading books, tinkering with alrgorithms, debugging, etc.
>
>And only a few chess programmers have bothered to go professional.
>
>So someone who keeps fastidious records will probably be hard to come by.
>
>On the other hand, I would be very interested to know if my estimates fall into
>line with what professional chess programmers have experienced. If they have
>not, I would be especially keen to find out why.
>
>I also suspect that computer chess programmers are among the worst paid software
>engineers in the world considering their skill level.
>
>But I might be wrong about that. I don't know much about their pay scale. But
>considering how few units are sold (except for ChessMaster) it seems it would be
>very hard to make it become actually worth while.
>
>I consider every chess software I buy an incredible bargain. And the free stuff
>-- amazing.
>
>But there are other amazing projects where all the labor is dontated too (e.g.
>PostgreSQL database).
There are many others, even in the game world. Take backgammon for example. The
current strongest software around is.... GNU Backgammon to be found at
http://www.gnubg.org
In the last 2 years that I have participated in the project it has gone from
being one of the strongest around to *the* strongest program around. It also
keeps records of your performance, analyzes the games, has a 3D board, etc. My
own contribution has come mostly in the form of documentation
(http://www.bkgm.com/gnu/AllAboutGNU.html), which was pretty much non-existent
at the time.
Albert
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