Author: blass uri
Date: 23:14:40 02/21/00
Go up one level in this thread
On February 21, 2000 at 21:41:21, Christophe Theron wrote: >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 > > >What a lousy programmer you are! Let me tell you that you'd better speed up a >little bit if you want to have the slightest chance to enter the SSDF list. :) >:) :) :) > >More seriously, the discussion is about Botvinnik. In 20 years they did not >manage to produce a program that played chess, even poorly, when one can write a >poor chess program in 24 hours. > >That's all. I think that the problem is that they tried to do too much. Maybe they have netter chances if they decided to try to produce a program that play chess poorly and only after that to try to do a better program with new design decsions when they need again to start from the beginning. Uri
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