4 ms·
Not chess if no en passant, castling, etc. It’s a prototype that’s demonstrated when the programmer realizes the “exceptions” double the code length, or aren’t
by aj7 8y ago
Not chess if no en passant, castling, etc. It’s a prototype that’s demonstrated when the programmer realizes the “exceptions” double the code length, or aren’t worth it because he’s not a chess player.
- mrob 8y agoEn passant is rare enough that it's still more or less the same game without it, but castling is extremely common. Deciding when to castle is a major part of chess strategy, and I agree that it's not really chess without it.
- sago 8y agoThese 'minimal chess' programs trace their lineage (and mostly their rules) back to ZX Chess [0] for the ZX81, which was a significant accomplishment, and remains notable in the history of personal computing, cropping up from time to time in lists of the greatest program ever written. It says this at the top of the page. It is not a naive prototype. I'd be very surprised if the programmer couldn't play chess. It's a part of computing history. And the competition to reduce the number of bytes is > 35 years old. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess