It seems to be the case that you don't need to be a great player to write a great program but it certainly doesn't hurt. I feel that it holds me back since I learned the rules just so that I could write a program.
I believe it's this way with other games too. Over the decades, some of the very best chess programs were written by non-masters. A few were written by very strong players and often strong players were involved as advisers. It seems that it's good to have a reasonable level of skill, but it's more important to be a skillful programmer. All other things being equal, I'm sure playing strength is important. I personally believe there is a certain skill-set that is somewhat related to teaching ability and not highly correlated to playing strength. The skill-set involves being able to articulate what you DO KNOW. I don't know how to explain it, but I can recognize it in others - I know how the really good chess programmers think and I'm sure similar skills are involved for those who know how to write good Go programs. Who has the best Go programs at 19x19 level? I think David Fotland is only 2 Dan and his is one of the best. I know the old handtalk program was written by a very strong player. How strong is Michael Reiss? And the other top guys? I'm not an expert on this but I would just guess that it's a bit more important in GO to be strong than in games like chess. - Don On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 07:41 +0200, Russ Williams wrote: > On 9/11/07, Joshua Shriver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Was reading a page about Go and came across this term. Anyone know > > what it means? > > With no disrespect intended, it seems like there are a fair number of > go programmers who don't actually know go very much beyond the rules > themselves. (I'm assuming from your question that you fall into this > category.) > > So I'm curious why non-go-players (or minimal-go-players) are > interested in programming go, instead of a game they know well. Is > there a similar situation in chess (are there a lot of chess > programmers who don't really know chess)? Hmm, maybe so. > > I also wonder whether experienced go programmers believe one needs to > know go to be able to make a very strong go program. Or will some of > the new Monte Carlo etc techniques sufficiently supplant expert domain > knowledge that any good programmer with just a rudimentary knowledge > of the rules of go will be able to make a strong go program? > > cheers, > russ > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
