Does making a chess engine make you good at chess?

Sort of a philosophical question, but still.

Should we consider Richard Vida (creator of Critter, which btw recently outranked Rybka and Stockfish) to be good at chess?

At what point do we distinguish between the achievements of man and the achievements of his creations?

No, it doesn't make someone good at chess. One of the creaters of Deep Blue, Feng-Hsiung Hsu wrote a book about it (called Behind Deep Blue), where he admitted that he was only rated around 1400.

I'm not saying that there is a correlation between good chess players and good chess programmers--I'm saying if we should consider a person who makes a powerful chess engine as being good at chess. After all, these people understand chess so well that they can obliterate literally anyone in their way.

it is theoretically possible for a human to create a chess playing algorithm (the structure behind a chess engine) and then just work out the best move using paper and pencil instead of having a computer do the number crunching, so that if given a long enough period of time, and if the engine was good enough, he could perform just as well as a computer using that engine. 

Alan Turing did precisely that, actually. See http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Turochamp

Alan Turing's implementation was exactly what i was thinking of indeed. he only went up to 2 ply in his games with it, but with infinite time he could have gone to 15 or 20 ply if he wished.

You likely need to know something about chess, but mostly it would mean you're a skilled programmer / computer scientist type.  After all programs play nothing like humans.  For example working on efficient searches and interpreting performance in certain sets of positions isn't going to improve you play.

As mentioned above Turing did this a long time ago.  I think it would be interesting to do this myself and test it with CC games here, calculating each move by hand.

It wouldn't be very strong of course, but it would be interesting to see what rating it would get.

At first I thought this was a pointless question but actually it makes sense because although its the ability to calculate deep tactics flawlessly that gives engines the edge over humans someone also had to work out how to assign evaluation scores to quiet positions and its those evaluations that seperate the top engines from the mere 'calculating machines'.

Deeper Blue only had the capacity to beat Kasparov because Joel Benjamin gave the programming team a high class GM's insights into what was really important in a particular position so I guess the guys writing the code for the top engines today must get some kind of input like that. Although even Houdini is not perfect when it comes to endgames, a lot of correspondence chess masters use their own analysis for positions where there are transitions into complicated endgames even if they use the engine for advice in the earlier part of the game.

No, a chess programmer should not be considered good at chess (i.e., good at playing chess with just their own wits), any more than somebody who makes a hammer should be considered good at pounding nails (i.e., good at pounding nails with just their own hands).

They may in fact be good at chess, but it wouldn't be because they built an engine.

Wafflemaster is right. Having dabbled with chess engine myself many moons ago, I would say that making a chess engine doesn't necessarily make you a better player. The machine thinks differently than we do. Today's engines rely on brute force algorithm with a bit of heuristics. I'd say the creators of Rybka, Houdini, Stockfish, and other strong engines probably are just lucky to find the correct weighting for the various positional elements. Unless you can calculate like the machine, the algorithm they employ is of little practical use for human chess players. Botvinnik once developed an algorithm that mimics the way a human chess player thinks. However, this algorithm turned out to be of little use to the computers. The brute force method ultimately prevailed over Botvinnik's algorithm.

Even if a 1200 player had memorized millions of games, he would still be crushed by a 1600 player. As soon as the game ventured into unknown territory, he would play like a 1200 player.

Memory is overrated at lower levels. It's important at very high levels (somewhere above NM, but I'm not sure at what level it becomes really important), but at lower levels, memorization without understanding is not worth much, because almost every game will go off the tracks sooner or later, and then a minor advantage as a result of theory won't stand up against the superior analysis and tactical skills of the higher rated player.

the chances a 1200 player has the brain power I was describing in my post is nill, unles he is playing his first game, but even then a rating inherited isn't an accurate description of true strentgth

Have no idea what that means.

Oh, maybe he's trying to be funny?  As in they're not good players, but the program they made can beat chess players so because they made it they're good too?  Like a joke.

Hm, a French Bohemian humorist.  I suppose it's possible...

No.

You learn programming.

I think a better way of viewing good engine algorithm writers, is as good at mathematics, as it pertains to chess tactics...

I think I need a translation.