Author: Dave Gomboc
Date: 18:59:29 02/20/00
Go up one level in this thread
On February 20, 2000 at 17:22:12, Amir Ban wrote: >On February 20, 2000 at 14:49:58, Christophe Theron wrote: > >>On February 20, 2000 at 10:01:46, blass uri wrote: >> >>>On February 20, 2000 at 02:35:02, Bruce Moreland wrote: >>> >>>>On February 20, 2000 at 02:25:32, Eelco de Groot wrote: >>>> >>>>>Botvinnik worked for many years on his program Pioneer but had very poor >>>>>hardware available to him in the USSR. It could solve some very difficult >>>>>positions from Botwinnik's games but never reached the stage where it could play >>>>>whole games as far as I know. >>>> >>>>The essence of intelligence is generalization, and the ability to generalize, >>>>however poorly, is built into any chess program very early on. Anyone can >>>>create a program in under 24 hours that plays a complete game. >>> >>> >>>I do not think that anyone can create a program in under 24 hours that plays a >>>complete game of chess even if the task is only to choose a random move. >> >> >>In 1987 I write the first version of my chess program for PC in one weekend. It >>began to play games only a few hours after I started to work. >> >>Of course I already had the experience of writting a chess program, but this one >>was completely different from the one I had written before. Not the same >>computer, not the same programming language, not the same basic data structures, >>everything was different. >> >>I think any experienced programmer, or even student, can create a chess program >>in a very short time, and a program that can play reasonnable beginner's moves. >> >>It actually happens all the time. Creating a chess program is a rather common >>project in the universities. A smart student can read some thesis about the >>subject and quickly write his own program. >> >> >> >>>Maybe you are right about professional programmers but >>>there are many people who do not know to create computer programs and many >>>people are going to fail in the task of creating a chess program that play chess >>>in under 24 hours even if they know something about programs but did only some >>>simple programs of not more than some hundreds of lines. >> >> >>Probably it's a difficult task for many people, but still it's doable and has >>been done already by non-professionals. >> >> >> >> Christophe > > >You guys must be terribly bright. Well, actually, of course you are, but I have >no idea what you are talking about. > >Writing a chess program from scratch in 24 hours or even a week doesn't make the >slightest sense to me. > >I think if I lost all my sources and had to recode my program based on memory it >would probably take me about 2 weeks to come up with a simplified but working >version. > >I would need to build the basic data structures, code the move generation >functions, code makemove and unmakemove, try to remember how this alphabeta >worked and where I need to change the signs, work on the quiescence search, >patch some simplified evaluation function (no hope of remembering even 10% of >the real thing) and think out its internal data structures. Then work on game >control structures, identify the terminal positions, do input & move parsing, >and do some move and board display. Did I forget anything essential ? Probably, >but I'll find this later when I start compiling and debugging, which will >probably take a long time because I coded in a hurry. > >I expect the result to look quite unprofessional and to play rather weakly after >only two weeks. If you want some fancy features like a working transposition >table and an opening book, you'll have to give me an extra week. > >And all this is just to recode something that I already have and know well. If >someone is merely a bright programmer but has to think out all these issues as >he goes, how much do you expect this to take ? I think writing a chess program >from scratch is certainly more than a student semester project, which takes a >semester. I manage programmers on a daily basis, and I need to have a feeling >for how long tasks will take them. I would not assign even my best programmer to >write a working chess program in less than 3 months, and even that seems a bit >ambitious. > >What am I missing ? > >Amir I think they meant whipping together a program that could play chess, without any particular hope of turning it into a very good program without restarting from scratch. (But I could be wrong.) Dave P.S. Hope you backed up Junior's source code in a safety deposit box or something! ;-)
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