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Why programmers should play Go
- Alex3917 18y agoIf anyone wants to play me, I'm Alex3917 on KGS. I'm still a beginner though, only 12kyu. http://www.gokgs.com/ http://www.gokgs.com/ Also, if you want a good introduction to the game, check out this K5 article: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/7/11/62356/9269 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/7/11/62356/9269
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoadded you as a friend. I'm 12k as well, though I have a lot of variance in my skill level.
- dood 18y agoI've kept out of KGS for a long time since it was just too tempting, but this post has inspired me to get back into action. I'll also be looking out for other HN readers, username d00d.
- cglee 18y agoVery nice. This reminds me of that "groups" feature request for HN...
- DavidSJ 18y agoThat was the article that got me into Go in 2002. I list in and some other recommended Go resources here: http://www.davidsj.com/post.php?id=A72_0_1_0_C http://www.davidsj.com/post.php?id=A72_0_1_0_C
- dan-kruchinin 18y agothanks! Great collection of links.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agogo is much more interesting than chess. chess is a battle to the death, in go you can have entire games without a single capture, and win by a point or two.
- cglee 18y agoIn chess you could have a checkmate without a single capture. Fool's mate, right?
- prospero 18y agoFew stones being captured is usually a sign of skillful players. I don't think the same can be said of fool's mate.
- hugh 18y agoDo you think that the fact that you can have entire games without a single capture, and win by a point or two makes it a more interesting game, or are those two unrelated thoughts?
- Leon 18y agoIt's probably a side effect of being a more interesting game, whatever that means to be more interesting, at least.
- prospero 18y agoThere's an interesting trend in the computer go community away from rule-based AI, and towards a more stochastic approach. This means that where the leading developers were all 1 dan or better (very talented amateurs, by the metric of the article), it's become possible for talented programmers with a relatively limited understanding of the game to make major contributions. Go is a complicated game, and the human response to that is to create rules of thumb and build a strong intuitive understandings of different positions. It's arguably less elegant to analyze a position by running hundreds of thousands of playouts, but it's finally a problem that resembles real computer science (though most academic papers are still of the "we tried this, and it did okay" form). It's a pretty exciting time to be involved, and I'd suggest that anyone with even a passing curiosity check it out.
- Alex3917 18y agoThe archives of this mailing list has some good discussions about the stochastic approach: http://computer-go.org/pipermail/computer-go/ http://computer-go.org/pipermail/computer-go/ Apparently the strongest computer AI is now able to beat 1k players consistently.
- prospero 18y agoIt's worth noting that it can beat 1k players on a 9x9 board. On a 19x19 board (the standard board size), they are both weaker and less consistent.
- dood 18y agoOne of the strongest current programs, MoGo, recently beat a 5 dan player on 9x9 using a monte carlo approach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_go#Monte-Carlo_methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_go#Monte-Carlo_methods
- prospero 18y agoI'd seen that, but I haven't seen any published results of 1k players being routinely beaten at 19x19. If I've missed something like that, I'd be grateful for a link.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI generally advise people to play games that involve some randomness, like poker, gin, or backgammon, before moving on to games without. The reason being that almost all of life involves decision making in situations with some random factor, and humans are ill-equipped by biology for this. Most decisions that don't involve some unknown are relatively easy. Go might be better for programming specifically (since randomness isn't a factor) but programming is a subset of life.
- brent 18y ago> Most decisions that don't involve some unknown are relatively easy. Apparently you don't play go. I play games for entertainment, not to mimic reality. Games with chance as a significant component aren't necessarily more entertaining than games requiring significant skill.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI would say the general population disagrees with you, which is why are games of chance a multi-billion dollar industry and only a few people can make a good living playing chess.
- brent 18y agoWell, other skill based "games" include the majority (or all?) of professional sports. If there were chance introduced at key points in the game (like drawing cards or flipping coins) I don't think anyone would watch baseball, football, or soccer. Also, board games involving skill (e.g. chess and go) have stood the test of time over many chance games.
- eru 18y agoFrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shootout_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shootout_(football)#History "Where a replay or playoff was not possible, ties were previously decided by drawing of lots. Examples include Italy's win over the USSR in the semi-final of the 1968 European Championship."
- whacked_new 18y agoThis article is irritatingly full of stretches. Go proverbs? Are there not chess proverbs? Similar can be said about managing companies and reading Sun Tsu's Art of War. You can extend the Art of War to interpersonal relationships. You can find meaning in every sentence in Harry Potter, if you felt like it. And Go can make you smarter? Go, like chess, involves short term and long term memory manipulation, risk analysis, pattern recognition, psychology, and executive planning, which further involves deception and short-term and long-term planning. While Go has more possible configurations than Chess, the feeble human mind will not be using some drastically different skillset to deal with it. That is to say, I doubt children who play Chess are worse off than those who play Go. Ergo, it's not Go: it's just the training of relevant skills, which is a byproduct of learning the game. Pardon my bluntness, but this reads like those articles that try to make something more mystical than it really is.
- jon_dahl 18y agoI think that most of what I said about Go could also apply to chess. I just have less experience with chess than with Go.
- dood 18y agoThe post gives a reasonable overview of why programmers may benefit from playing Go, but there is a whole lot more that could be said. Though I've not yet mastered either pursuit, I'll struggle to put some of my thoughts into words: Go is particularly suited as an exercise for the programmer's mind because both activities share some quite specific and fundamental cognitive skills, which people generally don't have unless they train. The overwhelming complexity of Go demands a specific and subtle mindset, which is very much applicable to programming; relaxed yet focused, careful but creative. Both practise mentally modelling, analysing, and manipulating a complex, evolving system, requiring frequent decisions which may have far reaching and unpredictable effects, which must balance immediate needs and possible outcomes. Go trains a holistic way of thinking, which is unusual to the average reductionist mind, requiring an integrative understanding of a system as composed of interrelating parts, and as a whole.
- jon_dahl 18y agoGood thoughts - I too have a lot to learn with both Go and programming, and I know there's a lot more going on (with each) than in my original post.
- TweedHeads 18y agoAnywhere to play GO in Flash or SVG against a computer in different levels? The only one I found is Yahoo Games but that one sucks and it doesn't have single player.
- eru 18y agoWhy do you want to play against a computer? Did SVG became Turing complete?
- foobar2k 18y agoI first heard of Go when the film Pi came out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0_(film)#The_game_of_Go It has conjured up visions of crazy hackers ever since.
- foobar2k 18y agoBug in the URL parser?