Best age for chess programming?

[Michael Sherwin]

Getting older I realise the advantage of programming experience versus the vitality of the youth.

But what do you think, in what age are computer chess programmers at their peak?

--
Srdja

PS: it seems polls on this site are broken, maybe an admin can take a look at it?

I can't really know the answer to this question because of my unique circumstances. But, I can tell that it is very difficult for me at 61. I make more bugs and it is harder to find them. I had to quit two recent attempts because the ideas were too complicated. I can't tell how long I have been working on this simpler but less promising one. Maybe I should keep a journal. The last bug was a monster to track down and eliminate. I must have looked at it a couple of dozen times and not seen it. And tG I found it. In one place I used FirstBit64() when I should have used LastBit64(). Anyway, I finally got a minimax (no alpha-beta) 6 ply material only search done without errors in full debug mode with plenty of active asserts. It was pseudo legal moves only and it processed 125 million nodes in 30 seconds using one thread on my Sandy Bridge i7-3930k. I'm guessing that debug mode with all those asserts is about 20 times slower than an optimised release version. So I am a bit more optimistic now than I was a few days ago. Anyway, at 20 to 30 being self taught I almost could write a chess engine. At 30 to 40 I was too busy to write a chess engine. At 40 to 50 I did write a chess engine but it took everything I had because of my peculiar learning disability that I am sure people are getting tired of hearing about. At 60 to 61 I had many failed starts. Then I learned I had an iodine deficiency. With iodine supplementation my mind is working better and with still great difficulty I am managing to create a new engine.

[mjlef]

In Komodo team Larry is 70+ and Mark 60+ I think . But probably same as here: It is a general truism in mathematics that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s and 30s.

I will be 60 in June. Granted, I am beginning to look more like a mad scientist, and they are always hard to age!

Mark