First attempt at a Python prog (Chess)

[Tim Roberts]

Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley at gmail.com> wrote:

>New to Python, which I really like BTW.
>
>First serious prog. Hope you like it. I know it needs a 'can't move if 
>your King would be put into check' test. But the weighted value of the 
>King piece does a surprising emergent job.

It looks a little like a C program ported line-by-line to Python.  For
example, in Python, there's no reason not to keep the board as an 8x8 array
instead of a 64-element list.  That by itself would make the code easier to
read.  It would also let you replace this:
    for row in range(8):
        for col in range(8):

with the more Pythonic:
    for row in board:
        for cell in row:

I would probably replace the piece_type function with a map that maps the
piece number directly to the piece 
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.