Author: Andreas Guettinger
Date: 06:19:15 01/14/06
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I read CCC regularly for 3-4 years now. As far as I can remember, there was always a big part of testers and computer tournament freaks posting here. On the other hand I agree that the level of interesting posts about programming went back in the last year or two. I think this is because some engine authors stopped posting here as you said, or choose not to post anymore about chess programming but just defend themselves and their engines. For example, when was the last thread you started about programming theory? It is always the case that when a lot of new engines or versions come out the a lot of testing takes place. Most of the time I ignore this kind of posts, because I' more intersted in the programming topics. I started to write a chess engine as a hobby programmer around the same time as I started to read here on CCC. Unfortunately my PhD as molecular biologists takes to much time at the moment to continue programming on my engine. A bad decision to rewrite my sources from C to C++ (a language that I'm less frequent with) around a year ago further complicated the goal to improve my engine and decreased my joy in programming. But I still read the CCC daily to not miss any important developments. I think it is completely contraproductive if the rest of the active programmers leave CCC know. In contrary, they just should start to post more, to bring CCC back to the same level as it was in the past. I saw some posts from Bruce and even from Chrilly Donninger in the past that revealed that they check to CCC from time to time. If there would be more programming threads in CCC, I'm sure some of them would start posting more frequently. For me as a biologist with zero educational computer science background, posts about chess programming are vital to help me continue the development of my engine. The recent jumps in playing strength from engines like Fruit and Rybka, after years of stagnation with 30 elo or so increases, points to the dirtection that engines can still be greatly improved, especially tactically. Humans will fall behind, because they can't envolve as fast as computers today. Evolution takes hundreds or thousands of years, unlike computer science. Therefore chess programming will probably develop away from commercial sales to hobby programming in the future. I completely agree with you that Rybkas strength is mainly based on the tactical level. But I disagree that the evaluation is more important for engines strength. A decent evaluation is important, but calculation and search is the domain of the computers, and revolutionary technics there will catapult chess engines forward, beyond human imaginations. Evaluation seems to be more important against humans, but against computers tactics seems to be the big hammer. After using that much of your time, I let you go now. But what CCC needs is definitely not less programmers. sincerely, Andy
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