I think it is like this:
The descriptive system evolved and is more natural and psychologically satisfying.
The algebraic system was designed and is more logical and less prone to ambiguity.
The two most civilised nations in Europe (Britain and Spain) held out against the algebraic system the longest.
I thought I was the only one thinking like this. Descriptive is so much more flexible in many cases, because of the orientation point of view.... I mean how do you translate the phrase " your KB2 is a vulnerable point" into another notation?
Well, at least players of both colours still want to put their Rooks on the 7th, or don't they?.....
Alekhine's Best Games IS available in algebraic, it was published by Batsford in 1996. I just received a copy of it the other day.
Alekhine's Best Games IS available in algebraic, it was published by Batsford in 1996. I just received a copy of it the other day.
I did not say it wasn't. I said I did not see the NEED for it and do see the RISK of bad conversions in the many reviews of algebraified classics such as the Levenfish work on Rook Endings. Just from an aesthetic point of view I expect that Fischer's 60 Memorable Games will probably be a much less elegant looking work in print after a conversion to figurine algebraic. The original was beautifully typeset and pleasure to look at beyond the quality of its raw content as opposed to the monograph of the month look of the informant style. I saw an article online that indicated that Fischer was displeased with the new edition and that changes had been made despite claims to the contrary. Graphic aesthetics mean nothing to the hard core player scrounging for ideas and nothing to the essence of the game so it does not matter all that much. It is more important to get Fischer's work in print as he wrote it even with some minor errors. There are far more in the Alekhine books or Reuben Fine's astounding Basic Chess Endings (astounding that it was so good and assembled in such as short time by a single author. There are some quibbles and complaints with Benko's update into algebraic if you go hunt them up, even with computer verification available to proof read the solutions).
So the algebraists have no Kingside, need 4 different ways to say fiancetto. Thing Knight starts with an "N"...How silly!
I can look at a complete game in descriptive without the board, and understand it. Algebraic is necessary to program computers, but pretty much useless for anything else.
to the OP,base 10 systems are not as easy to use as you think.
12 pence in a shilling can be shared in more ways viz 1,2,3,4 & 6 are factors. Abandoning £SD made life harder not easier. Circular measure and time are nigh on impossible in base 10.
Also imperial measurement is easier to estimate as based on body parts
an inch thumb joint to end of thumb.
a fathom relies on span
a foot is just that
Do you really order 450g of steak or a pound. An ounce of baccy or 56g
what about height and weight or distance...nobody expresses his/her height in cm
I still see television shows and movies where a guy will say "Knight to King's Bishop Three!" or something like that. It probably depends on whether the screenwriter is under or over forty.
... I mean how do you translate the phrase " your KB2 is a vulnerable point" into another notation?
"f2/f7 is a vulnerable point."
Frankly, the comments of the OP reflect the perspective of someone who learned descriptive first and then switched to algebraic.
Looking at it from the perspective of a person who learned algebraic first:
There's something seriously wrong wtih descriptive because it doesn't seem to matter how the board is oriented at all. How can e4 be both K4 and K5?! That's madness and confusing. Not only that, but algebraic has built in safety checks to ensure teh board is set up correctly so it is more robust. 'a1' is always a dark square, always. But QR1 can be a light or a dark square depending on which side of the board you're on. Indeed, every square name in descriptive is either light or dark depending on which color the person is playing!
The notion that someone who learned algebraic accidentally writing e5 for e4 because they're playing black is nonsense. It just doesn't happen. e5 is the name of the square, you know it's not e4 because it's a dark square and e4 is a light square. There's simply no way to make that mistake.
That said, I think it's useful to be able to play games in descriptive since many great old books are still very applicable, and hardly any of them are available in algebraic (and those that are tend to be of lesser quality than the origionals.) So anyone who can't use descriptive and can only read algebraic is missing out. Likewise, anyone who only knows descriptive is going to have a problem playing in a FIDE event since it is required to write your scoresheet in algebraic (well, technically you can use any notation system you want, but if you don't use algebraic you can't use your scoresheet for evidence of a claim). And most all modern publications use algebraic as well.
Algebric is great a must, but i still miss desciptive notation oh well. 
Well, to me descriptive notation is just alien talk like "Knight to King's Bishop Three!" Does that mean that the knight is saying something to the king's third bishop? How many bishops does the king have? Or, if you want to move the knight why are you also talking about the king and the bishop?
Well, I do actually know what it means, so don't start explaining it. But it is strange when you are not used to it.
So I certainly prefer algebraic notation.
... I mean how do you translate the phrase " your KB2 is a vulnerable point" into another notation?
"f2/f7 is a vulnerable point."
That's like writing his/her all the time to make up for the deficiencies in English pronouns. Just because something can be done is not an argument for its superiority. If algebraic has any disadvantage is the lack of an elegant way to describe universal ideas without reference to color. "Knight on King Five", "Rook on the seventh", etc are color blind concepts that are clumsier to express directly in algebraic. That is hardly a decisive argument against algebraic, but it is a fact.
Descriptive notation is okay, as long as it is not too verbose. Case in point:
what about height and weight or distance...nobody expresses his/her height in cm
Except for the whole western world, bared 2 countries.
I'm not at all surprised to see a thread where foggy grumpy old men yell "Things have changed since the 50ies! I'm scared!" I'm surprised you even know how to use a computer, your grandsons must have alot of patience with you.
The (new) publishing world is now figurine algebraic and that's that. Glad that's over.
There was nothing seriously wrong with descriptive and it makes better practical human sense because it is oriented to the player making the move rather than an abstract model of the board. It doesn't matter which color one is playing, the notation is the same.
I think is actually more natural and easier to get right in practice than algebraic where one must take into account which color one is playing. When playing black it almost feels like going backward notating e5 to e4 instead of P-K5. Being a geezer in his dotage who came into the game seriously around 1975 as a young adult, I learned descriptive first because nearly every book I could get was written using descriptive. It is interesting how some now have a problem with the player oriented model. I took up algebraic soon after, without issues or rancor, starting with my first recorded game. I have never recorded a game in any notation except algebraic. I can't tell you how many times I wrote down h1 for h8, switched e4 and e5, etc under pressure during games at the start. (Recording errors are made all the time regardless of notational system. Ask anyone who has had to edit a tournament bulletin. I will bet that even lifetime algebraic-only players occasionally write e5 as black when e4 is correct under stress or time trouble carrying the habit over from the games with white even without the "handicap" of being familiar with descriptive.)
The supposed virtues of algebraic are mostly abstract. It requires fewer characters to be written, in a few situations it is less prone to ambiguity, it is certainly better for computer chess applications, and it was the fashion outside of the English speaking world, Europe in particular where FIDE, and the Soviet Union and the other Eastern Bloc chess powers, existed with much greater chess gravity than the English speaking nations. Even at that it hardly universal. Alternate symbols are allowed for national variants in piece names (or were the last time I read the official rules, a long time ago) such as S for knight, L or F for Bishop, D for queen etc (solved in print by the use of figurines). And one is allowed several levels of abstraction, starting with the utterly inhuman square to square with no piece designation (I did that for a while) with no possibility of ambiguity, long algebraic with a piece (language dependent) noted with both squares, and the concise form with minimum information, piece (or staring file for pawns) and destination square only unless there is ambiguity. I have also seen pawn capture variants like ed and exd5 both used.
One is allowed preferences according to taste or habit, but a really heated advocacy of algebraic as if anyone using descriptive were a retarded rube is just a kind of pretentious bigotry. Find some other and more significant way to feel superior if you must. In any case, descriptive has been displaced long enough that the argument is dead and no new books use it. Now if those who revise the old books could stop making notation conversion errors and also mangling the book itself in many cases (Fischer's 60 Memorable Games comes to mind) we could be done with it once and for all outside of the domain of collectors. (Personally I do not see the burden of retro-reading descriptive to be such an obstacle that we even need to convert older works such as Fischer's 60 Memorable Games, Alekhine's Best Games etc. Fischer's book will be much less pleasing to look at rendered into Informantese. You are chess players, you have a brain, get used to it and study. It's not really like a foreign language you know, its just not that big. If I can learn enough Japanese to use Go problem books in the original (and it does not take much) you can read descriptive. Besides its all in Chessbase now, just get the notes out of the books. If you can't do that, you are not serious enough. And the old books can be found at bargain prices too.)
It is similar to the debate over going metric. The argument for going metric is far more compelling (including the elimination of the need to do arithmetic in bases 12 and 16 in a base 10 world, as well as streamlining international product handling) than the argument for algebraic. However the costs and inertia against metric in every respect is orders of magnitude greater than that for chess notation which is why one transition is nearly done and the other barely started. Certainly in real estate I do not expect the fine old unit of 10 square chains (derived from medieval agriculture as a bit of land one furlong long, one chain wide. Surely you know what a chain is don't you? It's 4 rods! What are they teaching our young people these days?! ) better known as an acre to be replaced with square meters or any such thing in my lifetime or even that of my children such is the sheer weight of cultural memory and the immense bulk of legal records and predecents, and money. It is a hard transition. Ever have the experience of having someone tell you that so-in-so tossed an implement (like a shot or discus) some figure in the other system, and you felt like asking him "But how far did he throw it?". Track and Field news tried going metric for a short while and went back when, after a much effort, even a staff of dedicated followers of world athletics working with it every day still kept asking that question.