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Comment by MrMcCall | Hacker News Reader

Wow. What a match. Been watching with my son, a chess lover since we started watching the Magnus-Fabi match. Now, my son loves his chess club and has retired me from playing :-)

Two thoughts:

1) Gukesh took Ding into the deep water the entire time. Few people realize how draining chess is, especially at that level for this time control. It's beyond gruelling. Only programming is more difficult ;-)

2) Gukesh had an extraordinary advantage. His mental health and resilience over the course of the match were a testament to it. And, then, his graciousness, thankfulness, and humble joy demonstrated the Way. It was That which Gukesh first thanked in his post-match interview with GM Mo. It was how he first began each game.

And That was the difference. That said, being 18 didn't hurt either :-)

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"Only programming is more difficult....". Programming is definitely easier for me. In chess, my ego gets in the way. I hate to lose.

Programming is easy. There is no opponent!

...although that means you can't wear your opponent down. The computer will always still be there, not doing what you want, no matter how long you draw things out, it will never screw up and start working because it's tired. But I agree that programming is (usually) easier than chess, certainly at these levels.

When you’re programming it’s an open book exam where the opponent is reality. You have all sorts of resources available to you and even the computer itself can help you find problems in your solution and you generally have as much time as you need.

Chess is a closed book exam where your opponent is another human and you have a fixed amount of time to answer questions and managing that is as as important as asking and answering questions. The question asked is who prepared better and who understands the game better and playing the man is a better strategy typically than playing reality (ie they often make suboptimal moves to try to screw up preparation ideas).

Different kinds of taxation but programming would generally be easier because there’s not as much pressure.

> you generally have as much time as you need

That's hilarious. I wish you had been my manager :-)

It reminds me of that quote by the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, about the wooshing sound deadlines make as they fly by him, or somesuch.

Nicely said, friend.

Rust's borrow checker?

Perfection is a difficult foe, and requires a fanatical devotion to even match, and there are levels upon levels of perfection.

Writing good prose can be similarly taxing.

way more imo

It all depends upon the problems you are solving, and they are only bounded by your own creativity.

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