Coder Creates Smallest Chess Game For Computers

The Sinclair ZX81 computer game 1K ZX Chess is no longer the smallest-sized chess computer program, as French coder Olivier Poudade has created BootChess, which is only 487 bytes in size, and the code can run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux computers. David Horne's 1K ZX Chess contained 672 bytes of code and had held the record for 33 years.

Poudade, who says creating something smaller seemed impossible at first, achieved his goal by making BootChess even more basic than its 1982 predecessor. The board and pieces are represented by text alone, with P representing pawns, Q used for the queens, and full stops put in the place of empty squares. Poudade hopes BootChess will inspire more programmers to get involved in the sizecoding scene.

"[It] demonstrates why assembly language is still the language of choice to excel [at] in programming," he says. "[And it] reminds others that optimizing in computer programming is not only about speed, but also about size."

From BBC News
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