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Subject: Re: FirstChess - a crazy project!

Author: Pham Hong Nguyen

Date: 06:37:47 07/24/02

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[snip]
>A very interesting and laudable project.  I think it is somewhat of a mistake to
>assume that code which is more comprehensible to the author will be more
>comprehensible to some other student reading it.

Hi Dann. Thank you very much for your help and encouragement :)
Your suggestions are very helpful. I took them and now I am improving source
code (I will send you for getting further comments and checking).

Here is just a hard point that I want to discuss more:

>The minimum chess game can make e.p. captures and castle.  If you cannot do
>that, you are playing some other game besides chess.  It's like writing a
>checkers game where the checkers cannot turn into kings.  The primary rules of
>the game should be included.
>
>Also, 50 move and 3x repeat are pretty basic and pretty important.  If your
>program does not understand these rules, it will annoy people.

I think hard about this point. I agree without EP, castle, 50 move rules and 3
repetition rules the game is partly like chess. Unfortunately, they require too
many technique details and may expand doubly the source code. I am also afraid
that learners will lose the main way in the matrix of details. Some of those
details will require extra explainations from experts or few days of studying
(not my desire). BTW, there are so many existing and much better source codes
which have implemented every rules of chess. Perhaps, it is better if we have a
lower thing as other alternative for learners. There is a trade off here:
cutting off difficult rules for simpleness.

The philosophy of my program is to create an extremely simple source code, aim
at illustrating only basic functions of a chess engine. It is not for playing
(even learners can try few moves), but for short studying (few hours or a day)
to get some ideas and confidence before going to a real chess source code.

Annoyance may be a good thing for learners :) Yes, I try to not make everything
ready. If a learner feels annoying because program lacks so many things, it
probably means he thinks he understands everything and can do better without
panic, then he may soon start writting his own engine or studying real ones. It
is main purpose of my program.
PHN



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