Nostalgia

[Matthias Gemuh]

Nostalgia

I yearn to have those ancient days back when chess engine authors used to write their source code themselves. You braced yourself, launched an editor, created a blank file and personally wrote "#include <stdio.h>" in the upper left corner.
How can we go back there ?

Matthias.

[Rebel]

Nostalgia

How can we go back there ?

We need the OWG (One World Government) to act. All engine authors are forced to confess at Oprah. Then the OWG will erase all of CC history (rating lists included) and place every engine author or wanna be engine author on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific with a clean PC + compiler and no internet access. Once a month OWG special agent Sknab Maharg will visit the islands and collect new versions to be tested in the OWG - LRCC competition.

Looking forward to Oprah, I will confess anything she wants.

[A Distel]

Nostalgia

How can we go back there ?

We need the OWG (One World Government) to act. All engine authors are forced to confess at Oprah. Then the OWG will erase all of CC history (rating lists included) and place every engine author or wanna be engine author on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific with a clean PC + compiler and no internet access. Once a month OWG special agent Sknab Maharg will visit the islands and collect new versions to be tested in the OWG - LRCC competition.

Looking forward to Oprah, I will confess anything she wants.[/quote]

What you gonna say? I made myself platinum, but I was born a dirty blonde

[JuLieN]

Nostalgia

How can we go back there ?

We need the OWG (One World Government) to act. All engine authors are forced to confess at Oprah. Then the OWG will erase all of CC history (rating lists included) and place every engine author or wanna be engine author on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific with a clean PC + compiler and no internet access. Once a month OWG special agent Sknab Maharg will visit the islands and collect new versions to be tested in the OWG - LRCC competition.

Looking forward to Oprah, I will confess anything she wants.

Ed, maybe time to advertise again for your chart of honor? I can't find the link to it...

@Matthias:
Prédateur's birth was on a paper notebook, and the first line in the editor then was "Program Predateur;". I diged in my 0.0.1's sources files (august 2007) today and was amazed that some parts of this archeocode still exist in my latest version (some parts of the move generator, or I/O, etc...).

[Ajedrecista]

Hello Julien:

Ed, maybe time to advertise again for your chart of honor? I can't find the link to it...

Here are the links I found about the 'programmer code of honor' that Ed proposed last year:

http://www.top-5000.nl/programmer_code.htm

Programmer code of honor

Programmer code of honor (update)

I think it is a good initiative but I doubt about its success.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

[PK]

"Programmer code of honor", whereas an interesting idea, wrongly assumes that all programs by one author conform to the same standard. This is often not the case. I have programmed an open source derivative (Rodent) and a closed source original joint effort (Glass, with Edmund Moshammer), and it succesfully prevents me from filling Ed's form.

[hgm]

Nostalgia

I yearn to have those ancient days back when chess engine authors used to write their source code themselves. You braced yourself, launched an editor, created a blank file and personally wrote "#include <stdio.h>" in the upper left corner.
How can we go back there ?

Matthias.

Easy as pie. Just ignore everyone that writes an engine above 2500 Elo. There are still plenty of people writing their own engine from scratch.

Play a variant. My Capablaca / Gothic 10x8 tournaments never saw any clones. They are simply non-existent. Look at the thread of the Spartan tourney in the Tournaments section: only original authors!

[michiguel]

"Programmer code of honor", whereas an interesting idea, wrongly assumes that all programs by one author conform to the same standard. This is often not the case. I have programmed an open source derivative (Rodent) and a closed source original joint effort (Glass, with Edmund Moshammer), and it succesfully prevents me from filling Ed's form.

Why not fill more than one entry?

Miguel

[Dragan]

This is exactly how I started with Nebula.
The only issue is that I am still very much influenced by the open source code I saw before I started writing my own engine (I forbid myself to look at any open source while writing Nebula).
For instance, I tried my hardest to do the singular extensions my own completely original way. As the result, Nebula was solving test positions nicely, but the elo gain was minimal.
Then I tried implementing SE using the search(..., skipMove) method I remembered seeing in some open source engines. That works much better. So should I give up on this ELO gain, because I didn't thought of it myself?
My answer is no. If I decided not to implement anything I read before, Nebula would be 2000 elo engine at most.
So writing your own engine from scratch in the era of super-strong open source engines is not the same as before. I am afraid those old days of glory are gone forever

[Rebel]

Hello Julien:

Ed, maybe time to advertise again for your chart of honor? I can't find the link to it...

Here are the links I found about the 'programmer code of honor' that Ed proposed last year:

http://www.top-5000.nl/programmer_code.htm

Programmer code of honor

Programmer code of honor (update)

I think it is a good initiative but I doubt about its success.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

Its success is really up to the programmers themselves. 28 entries so far means something. What's missing are the big-elo-boys. Without their support no standard can be established.