Want to make a quick US$30?

[sje]

(Presented without comment.)

Want to make a quick US$30? Or maybe as much as US$250!

All you have to do is write a strong chess engine that's UCI compatible, can access tablebases along with an opening book. Oh, and it has to be able to learn. All work must be original (no cloning), and you wil sign over all rights.

http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/ ... ammed.html

[Jérémy Pages]

Here are some statistics about my to-be-released-soon engine (Hippocampe)

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 1,347
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 0.27 (3.28)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 0.33 (3.93)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 0.84
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 36,938
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).


(Data generated by David Wheeler's Sloccount)

So, i think that this kind of proposition is simply ridiculous. One person-day costs several hundreds of dollars, for a software engineer, and it's impossible to develop a good UCI
engine in one day or less.
For example, the cost of development for my engine (amateur engine, strong engines have about 10000 lines of code) is more than one hundred times higher than his "budget".

[sje]

Just for a laugh, the new CIL Toolkit is approaching a half megabyte of source text and still needs plenty of work:

Code: Select all

$ wc *.lsp
     477    2225   16944 CILBitboard.lsp
     284     938    8861 CILBitboardData.lsp
     295    1171   10523 CILBoardVec.lsp
      96     453    4098 CILBoardVecAtk.lsp
      65     210    2038 CILBook.lsp
     207     811    7532 CILCPC.lsp
     112     354    3813 CILCastling.lsp
     242     983    8614 CILCensus.lsp
     203     670    7021 CILChessClock.lsp
     238     876    9449 CILCountMoves.lsp
     381    1576   16586 CILDatabase.lsp
     216     756    7596 CILDirection.lsp
     253     880    8096 CILDirectionData.lsp
    1005    3748   36923 CILEnumerations.lsp
     340    1153   11436 CILExecute.lsp
     393    1329   13718 CILFEN.lsp
     216     761    7055 CILForce.lsp
     142     386    3536 CILForward.lsp
     367    1250   12074 CILGame.lsp
     776    2834   32378 CILGenerate.lsp
     334    1311   10681 CILHash.lsp
     179     605    6143 CILHashCalc.lsp
      93     352    3531 CILHashDict.lsp
     138     512    4700 CILHashFLT.lsp
      61     216    1823 CILHistory.lsp
     343    1056   10024 CILICP.lsp
      42     140    1195 CILKingSqVec.lsp
     148     330    4137 CILLoader.lsp
      70     265    2408 CILMateSearch.lsp
      51     174    1541 CILMaterialVec.lsp
      64     231    1986 CILMisc.lsp
     368    1375   12310 CILMove.lsp
     124     475    3840 CILMoveList.lsp
     323    1083   11551 CILMoveListMark.lsp
     213     827    7210 CILMoveListSAN.lsp
     170     694    6086 CILMovePath.lsp
     197     619    6014 CILMoveSAN.lsp
     228     805    8672 CILNoMoves.lsp
     164     558    4887 CILPGN.lsp
     225     766    7391 CILPIR.lsp
     139     545    4622 CILPSE.lsp
     103     334    3761 CILPin.lsp
     227     904    7875 CILPosEval.lsp
     397    1458   14065 CILPosFunc.lsp
     126     393    3617 CILPosIO.lsp
      97     401    3281 CILPosUpdate.lsp
      96     516    5793 CILPosition.lsp
      60     242    2209 CILPrelim.lsp
     144     464    4176 CILPrimitives.lsp
      73     278    2616 CILRandomGame.lsp
      99     350    2775 CILReader.lsp
     294    1004    9393 CILScore.lsp
     165     625    5424 CILSearchBase.lsp
     197     618    5359 CILSelfTest.lsp
     260     917    8435 CILSpace.lsp
     169     633    5778 CILTABSearch.lsp
       8      41     249 CILTablebase.lsp
      47     185    1578 CILTest.lsp
     312    1094   10639 CILTime.lsp
      86     347    2616 CILTracker.lsp
     135     389    3545 CILUCI.lsp
     522    2099   18036 CILUtilities.lsp
     270     706    7078 CILXboard.lsp
   13869   50301  477341 total

The file CILLoader.lsp is not part of the program; it contains the bootstrap used for loading and compilation.

[Dann Corbit]

(Presented without comment.)

Want to make a quick US$30? Or maybe as much as US$250!

All you have to do is write a strong chess engine that's UCI compatible, can access tablebases along with an opening book. Oh, and it has to be able to learn. All work must be original (no cloning), and you wil sign over all rights.

http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/ ... ammed.html

You could make as much as ten cents per hour!

[fern]

30 bucks? This man is breaking the market. I was prepared to offer 12 bucks for something like that, but with this guy making such offers I guess nobody will take mine.

Fern

[hgm]

Too bad they are asking for UCI, and not WinBoard! I could have gotten $2.50 per line on micro-Max!

[sje]

30 bucks? This man is breaking the market. I was prepared to offer 12 bucks for something like that, but with this guy making such offers I guess nobody will take mine.

I'm much more generous; I'd offer US$20, but only if the result ran on my Apple IIe (2 MHz 6502, 64 KB RAM) with a playing strength of at least 3000 elo.

[Karlo Bala]

Too bad they are asking for UCI, and not WinBoard! I could have gotten $2.50 per line on micro-Max!

I think you should add these 2 more lines (UCI) and take those 30$

[sje]

Seriously, I'd keep an eye on this guy -- if his identity could be ascertained. I'd say it's likely that if he ever gets a program out then it just might be a ripoff of some existing engine.

[Dirt]

Too bad they are asking for UCI, and not WinBoard! I could have gotten $2.50 per line on micro-Max! :lol: :lol: :lol:

I think you should add these 2 more lines (UCI) and take those 30$ :lol:

His program doesn't actually meet some of the other posted requirements. MicroMax has no tablebase capability and I don't think it has learning. Those could possibly be fixed with a few weeks work, but the source has already been published, which appears to be a permanent disqualification.