Why would someone someone obsess over writing the world’s smallest chess
program? Poudade has a complicated answer, involving paying his respects to
a long-ago programming genius, drawing attention to his own coding group,
and proving a thing or two to young-whippersnapper coders. That’s what
motivated him to devote hundreds of hours to code what is ultimately a tiny
black-and-white grid of text and numbers. Poudade’s chasing something like
the Platonic ideal of computer chess programs.
He did something that mattered; he had the record. But, as they say,
records are made to be broken.
Via Reddit, The bitter rivalry behind the world’s
smallest chess program
Poudade's chess game is only 487
bytes in size, yet it's not the shortest chess program anymore, having an
extraneous six bytes! And Poudade is not happy about that.
I didn't know the world of smallest chess programs was so cutthroat.
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