Author: Carmelo Calzerano
Date: 17:55:51 12/10/01
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On December 10, 2001 at 19:33:42, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: >On December 10, 2001 at 19:15:49, Carmelo Calzerano wrote: > >>"Crafty offers everyone a very clean starting point... The search and >>quiescence code is reasonably straightforward, as is the evaluation >>code. If you are interested in trying a new search extension, you can >>be testing tomorrow, rather than next year..." > >[...] > >>Commercial chess programs code has to be understood only by the programmer >>himself, which (apart from being the author) is usually far more skilled >>in chess programming than people toying around with Crafty sources... > >It is my experience that when one wants to actually make a substantial >change to Crafty (i.e. something more than changing some parameter here >and there), you will find that it is not as clean as you might expect >it to be. I know you implemented the SE in Crafty, so I'm sure you know what are you saying :-) >Many parts require a working knowledge of bitboards, lots have hidden >interdependencies, sometimes the comments in the code are just plain >outdated, etc... Unfortunately, we don't have access to commercial program sources, so cannot make a comparison :-) >Doing something _useful_ in Crafty requires extensive programming >skills. Ever wondered why there are so few outside contributions in >the Changelog? Agreed; but I bet that commercial chess programs have even less ;-) I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but in my opinion releasing an open source program to be studied an modified by others brings to different choices in balancing complexity and readability, thus leaving less freedom to the programmer. The main reason I don't release Leila sources (even if I feel I should, since I learned almost everything I know about chess programming studying other programmers work) is because I think it couldn't be useful, due to its unreadability... BTW, since you are one of the best known open-source programmers around, I really would like to have your opinion about that. Regards, Carmelo
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