

Why programmers should play Go - jon_dahl
http://railspikes.com/2008/7/14/why-programmers-should-play-go

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prospero
There'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.

~~~
schtog
Yes chess isn't really interesting out of an AI-perspective since a
supercomputer can beat a human with brute force + heuristics. In Go you'd need
something more like real AI.

~~~
geebee
Chess could be interesting from an AI perspective if you limited the amount of
brute force searching allowed. Computer chess and human chess are, by and
large, completely different games.

I'm not sure I agree with this article about patterns in chess. The real
masters think strategically as well as tactically, and use the structure of
the pawns and pieces, combined with intuition, to guide their moves.

Ultimately, I suspect that go and chess fire up similar regions of the human
brain.

~~~
pon
They did MRI on Z.Polgar while she was playing. What they found out was chess
thinking happens in a small region of the brain. The region is the same humans
use when trying to recognize faces. Training modifies that machinery to
recognize chess board positions too.

~~~
geebee
Huh, that surprises me. I would have expected a chess master to use more of
her brain than I do (not that I know how my own brain would look all wired up,
but I have trouble believing that I don't think much more narrowly about the
game - kind of how people who actually understand math approach factoring a
set of equations differently from people who need a set of rules they can
follow closely).

~~~
eru
Perhaps they only looked at what parts of their brain experienced chess
players used more?

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mattmaroon
I 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
> 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
I 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
Well, 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.

~~~
mattmaroon
Chance is a huge element in sports. Otherwise nobody would watch them.

You're separating luck and skill as if games can't have both, and in the
process entirely missing my point.

~~~
brent
Clearly there is a spectrum, I'm not missing your point. In this spectrum
though, chess/go/sport are at one end and gambling is at the other. Poker is
in the middle.

~~~
mattmaroon
Sport is probably closer to the middle than you think, especially where a team
is involved. If you don't think an athlete can get unlucky, ask anyone on the
Falcons. One teammate does something stupid and your team is out of contention
for years.

Teams are generally businesses too, and just like most other businesses have a
huge random element.

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Alex3917
If anyone wants to play me, I'm Alex3917 on KGS. I'm still a beginner though,
only 12kyu.

<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>

~~~
DavidSJ
That 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>

~~~
dan-kruchinin
thanks! Great collection of links.

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dood
The 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
Good 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.

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whacked_new
This 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
I think that most of what I said about Go could also apply to chess. I just
have less experience with chess than with Go.

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foobar2k
I first heard of Go when the film Pi came out:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0_>(film)#The_game_of_Go

It has conjured up visions of crazy hackers ever since.

~~~
foobar2k
Bug in the URL parser?

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nazgulnarsil
go 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.

~~~
hugh
Do 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
It's probably a side effect of being a more interesting game, whatever that
means to be more interesting, at least.

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TweedHeads
Anywhere 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
Why do you want to play against a computer?

Did SVG became Turing complete?

