Author: Uri Blass
Date: 16:57:26 09/01/05
Go up one level in this thread
On September 01, 2005 at 16:50:38, David Mitchell wrote: >On September 01, 2005 at 09:40:50, Uri Blass wrote: > >>We have a lot of free chess programs with source code and the question that I >>ask myself is if people need to pay money for programmers or they may hope to >>get a program that do the task without money and save money. >> >>A good example is rating. >> >>The program that the israeli chess organization is using have a lot of >>disadvantages. >> >>1)There is no option to calculate rating dynamically. >> >>It means that it is impossible to add tournaments later and ask the program to >>calculate the rating for previous update retroactively or to exclude tournaments >>that were calculated without a lot of work. >> >> >>2)All the data is in one computer and it is impossible to work about everything >>from home. >> >>3)It is impossible to edit results of the israeli league and if there is a >>mistake people need to delete everything and write it again. >> >>4)There is no option of digital copying of tournament even if it is sent in the >>right format. >>For example it is better if the program can read cross table and enter it to the >>rating automatically >> >>The claim of people is that all of this is going to cost a lot of money but can >>save hours of work later and unfortunately the israeli chess organization does >>not like to spend money on better rating system. >> >>I am not sure about the first part and I think that writing a strong program >>like fruit2.1 is an harder task than all the tasks that are described but the >>programmer do not ask money for it. >> >>My question is if you think that there is an hope that the israeli chess >>organization can get a free program to do all the tasks without paying money in >>case that the organization does the right steps to explain programmers exactly >>what they need to do. >> >>Uri > >IMO, Uri, your chess league should NOT be using free source code. They need a >standard spreadsheet or database, which will not only permit proper editing, but >allow timely updates, exclusions, etc., very easily. > >The problem with "free" code is that there's a big effort needed to 1) make it >properly functional 2) teach people how to work with it, because it's "one of a >kind", and nobody has any experience with it. 3) getting timely updates or >extensions/modifications of the program. You MIGHT get lucky enough to have >someone code up the program, but getting them to then keep making modifications, >extensions, and of course, bug-killing as needed, well - that's asking for a LOT >of free work, and let's face it - it's just not THAT interesting a subject. > >It may seem like a big expense to buy Excel and/or Access software, but in the >long run, your group will be way, way ahead. The high quality of the software >makes everything you need to do, a whole lot easier. Reading in data from a >tournament into a spreadsheet or database for instance, is very simple. > >Custom software, or "freeware" may seem like a great bargain, but it's really >not the bargain it appears to be. Nobody is already trained to use it, it may >not be free of serious bugs, and who's going to maintain it or make revisions >your group needs? >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>3)It is impossible to edit results of the israeli league and if there is a >>mistake people need to delete everything and write it again. > > --------------- absolutely unbelievable, what are they doing here ? --------- > > > >If you're only keeping it on one computer, it should make the cost very >reasonable. > >Good luck. > >Dave Thanks for your response. The israeli league was only one example and the same program is used to calculate all the Israeli chess rating. Note that I am one of the members of the Israeli chess rating committee(the committe is not only about rating but rating is one of the subjects that they deal with it). Members are all volunteers and we do not get money for it but it is important for me to have a better rating system and it is clear that without a new program it will not be easy to make changes in the rating system. I also have part of the data because GM Ram Sofer(the person who is resposible for using the software that they have in the last months) sent me some access files. Personally I know almost nothing about access so I simply translated the columns to text files by copy and paste and wrote some program in C to calculate statistics about the text files. I think that it is even better if the Israeli chess organization get rid of all the access and simply save the results in text files and use some C program to read text files and analyze them. In that case if there is a mistake people only need to edit the text files. Note that I already have a program to analyze text files but the format of my text file today is not good for editing because of the way that I copied the data. I copied the data from the access file by copy and paste so I copied long columns that is clearly easier than copying small lines that have only details about a single game. Note that copying the columns to text files was slow and for some reason that I do not understand copying 54,326 numbers from access to text file takes some minutes(54,326 that is the number of games in 2002 is only one example). I did not try to copy full tables that may have 15 columns because I did not like to wait more than an hour to copy all the table. Note that I do not understand why copying a simple text file of 54,326 numbers by copy and paste take long time when I copy it from access file to text file when the same problem does not exist if I copy text file to another text file. Uri
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