chess programmer benefits

[Steve Maughan]

I credit computer chess with helping me get into Cambridge university.

I remember I had put computer chess down as a hobby on my application form. On the way to the interview I happened to be reading Newborn's book about how computers play chess. During the interview one of the professors casually asked, "tell be about the algorithms used in computer chess". I vividly remember his face when I said, "actually computer chess is mainly heuristics and not algorithms since the moves played are not definitively the best".

Of course there are algorithms in computer chess but I'm convinced the shock value of this precocious statement from a 18 years old kid got me a tick in the right column!

Steve

[Daniel Shawul]

Thanks for the input Steve. I am sure it would have impressed anyone when you are at that age, but maybe not so much when you are a grown up
But I believe still it can be helpful if you focus on the skills you developed and explain why it can be helpful to them. Lets face it chess directly is probably not going to be helpful for anyone, and may in fact have the reverse effect.

[jdart]

I wrote Arasan back in the 1990s when I was learning C++. And it did help me learn C++ and I used that knowledge in my professional programming work at the time. But soon afterwards I switched to Java at work and was involved in large-scale Java software projects for the next 15 years or so, during which time whatever I was doing in computer chess was less relevant to my professional work.

--Jon

[mvk]

This is a Henk style question. But I was wondering if any of you programmers have benefited from the skills you developed here elsewhere in your jobs or life. I don't mean the bare satisfaction you get from chasing some obscure objective, I mean money, house or impressing the opposite sex. Scratch that last one ain't gonna happen Is it even safe to mention this in a resume. What does it convey if you did so?

From an employer point of view (in industrial automation / embedded systems) this is the kind of activity I'm looking for in resumes for fresh graduates, but for them only. It shows that they have a passion for computer science and technology and probably have spent the hours needed to master the field of programming that a CS curriculum doesn't require. If you have nothing but course credits you generally won't get invited for a first interview here, so such hobby projects are essential. For experienced developers their work history should give sufficient information. For both groups a code review is part of our policy btw. It is amazing how good that filters.

[Daniel Shawul]

This is a Henk style question. But I was wondering if any of you programmers have benefited from the skills you developed here elsewhere in your jobs or life. I don't mean the bare satisfaction you get from chasing some obscure objective, I mean money, house or impressing the opposite sex. Scratch that last one ain't gonna happen Is it even safe to mention this in a resume. What does it convey if you did so?

From an employer point of view (in industrial automation / embedded systems) this is the kind of activity I'm looking for in resumes for fresh graduates, but for them only. It shows that they have a passion for computer science and technology and probably have spent the hours needed to master the field of programming that a CS curriculum doesn't require. If you have nothing but course credits you generally won't get invited for a first interview here, so such hobby projects are essential. For experienced developers their work history should give sufficient information. For both groups a code review is part of our policy btw. It is amazing how good that filters.

Thanks Marcel. It is good to have an employer's perspective who I am trying to impress. I can not give out all the details but the list of requirements goes like this: c++,valgrid, mpi, hpc, threads, so you wonder why won't they just employ a chess programmer

[ZirconiumX]

This is a Henk style question. But I was wondering if any of you programmers have benefited from the skills you developed here elsewhere in your jobs or life. I don't mean the bare satisfaction you get from chasing some obscure objective, I mean money, house or impressing the opposite sex. Scratch that last one ain't gonna happen Is it even safe to mention this in a resume. What does it convey if you did so?

From an employer point of view (in industrial automation / embedded systems) this is the kind of activity I'm looking for in resumes for fresh graduates, but for them only. It shows that they have a passion for computer science and technology and probably have spent the hours needed to master the field of programming that a CS curriculum doesn't require. If you have nothing but course credits you generally won't get invited for a first interview here, so such hobby projects are essential. For experienced developers their work history should give sufficient information. For both groups a code review is part of our policy btw. It is amazing how good that filters.

Thanks Marcel. It is good to have an employer's perspective who I am trying to impress. I can not give out all the details but the list of requirements goes like this: c++,valgrid, mpi, hpc, threads, so you wonder why won't they just employ a chess programmer

Perhaps they did not know that such a field existed. Not all chess programmers are equal (looks at self nervously), but I think Scorpio demonstrates pretty good understanding of all of those fields. You'd be great for it.

Matthew:out

[Daniel Shawul]

Yeah yeah mathew. Now go send me a hate mail like last time.

[michiguel]

Hey you don't have to brag about it Some of us have to fill our CVs with whatever we can get. Remember there is one after zero, and there is a first to everything.

In my area it does not help to include hobbies in the CV. Since my job is not related to programming, I cannot get anything useful out of it, even if I wanted. If I feel it could help me, I would not include it in hobbies, but in "artificial intelligence" skills or something a bit more formal.

But then again, my perception of what a private company may be looking for could be completely wrong. In academia things are different.

Miguel

I am surprised you think so. In fact my thought was it should help even more in academics than anywhere else. There is no such thing as 'doesn't help' if you can communicate it well. If I am not mistaken you are what a layman calls biologist/chemist guy. I hear those are the heaviest users of clusters here though i have no idea what they do with it (cancer research maybe). So my belief is programming skills and hpc stuff should help anyone in academics let alone engineers.

It helps me, but it does not help me in terms of getting jobs, promotions etc. which was your specific question if I understood correctly. In fact, one of my goals when I started was to learn C. Until that point, I only programmed in Pascal. Again, as soon as I could, I tried to make a parallel version, for the knowledge it would give me.

This is variable according to the level at which the student/scientist is in their career.

As Steven says, it will certainly help to get you accepted to a good University. No question about it. It may help a tiny bit for graduate school if phrased properly. Then, it does not anymore (at least in my area). Like you said, it is important to have knowledge of clusters, programming etc. but those things are evaluated differently. For a post-doc positions 1) in the letters of recommendation it will be clear if you can transfer that information to actual work 2) specific scientific products derived of your knowledge, publications using computers, presentations etc.

For a faculty position, you general aptitude, breadth of knowledge, collegiality etc. etc. will be evident in an interview. But at that point there are so many other things that a hobby will have very little impact.

It may help in very very very specific situations though: In case I am looking for someone to develop software in bioinformatics (for instance) in something I have an idea and it is completely new. Then, I will be actively searching for someone with the skills we are taking about. But those are temporary jobs (that can get you later another one...).

Miguel

[Kempelen]

In my case I learned a lot from cumputer chess programming and it has served my in other field, but limited. I am a security consultant and has to write sometimes Excel books with lot of macros. I remember a teammate making a kind of risk analysis sheets, it takes quite time to finish when running. He let me to look the code, and after a quick view I bet with him I could be able to fix his code to do the work in less than 5 minutes. I win a meal. I was able to optimize the code in lot of places from what I had learned with Rodin.

Other skill I have learned the hard way is patience: patience to wait for result, and patience to write ideas in a priority list and don't start coding then as soon as they arrive. Curiosity, learning patience in computer chess has served me to apply patience in personal and profesional life, as when I encounter a situation that requieres long time, I always remember my hobbies and what was/is the best way to expect result. It made me a lot of impression the first hobbie years when I discovered that been order and patient makes revenues, Is only a flashback it comes to me in occasions.

[tpetzke]

It does not help me directly in my job, because I'm not paid as a programmer. But for some of the problems I'm faced with being able to program is helpful.

I remember once I wrote a macro that detects common disaster recovery patterns in large test sets using a kind of zobrist hashing. But such a direct application is rather uncommon.

I don't think it will hurt to express an interest for computer chess if you work in the IT industry or computer science. If you are worried that it might hurt it is to late anyway.

If you enter "Daniel Shawul" in google guess what the first link is?

Thomas...