These 'minimal chess' programs trace their lineage (and mostly their rules) back to ZX Chess [0] for the ZX81, which was a significant accomplishment, and remains notable in the history of personal computing, cropping up from time to time in lists of the greatest program ever written. It says this at the top of the page.
It is not a naive prototype. I'd be very surprised if the programmer couldn't play chess. It's a part of computing history. And the competition to reduce the number of bytes is > 35 years old.
It is not a naive prototype. I'd be very surprised if the programmer couldn't play chess. It's a part of computing history. And the competition to reduce the number of bytes is > 35 years old.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess