Author: Peter Berger
Date: 12:12:02 03/28/01
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On March 28, 2001 at 14:12:49, Robert Hyatt wrote: > > >I have said this before, but I have not said it recently, so here goes: > >"auto232 is a piece of trash". > >Nothing else to be said. When a protocol has built-in timing dependencies >that get fried when they are not met, such a protocol is trash. At one point >Crafty worked perfectly. Then someone got a faster CPU. I had to add a delay >to not move _too_ quickly else auto232 would miss the move and the game would >hang. If I probe endgame databases too hard, the interrupts somehow cause >auto232 to hang. > >To have to have a function "Delay()" in your code, and to have to have a >command "delay N" where N is in milliseconds, is terrible. But when you then >have to tell users "you have to find N for yourself. Try the default and if >it hangs, try other values until it doesn't" makes my software engineering >skin crawl. Think about how many different values there are for up to a one >second delay. :( > >And a user has to experiment to find the right one? And then he upgrades >something (faster processor, faster disks, more memory, new operating system, >faster/slower version of the chess engine) and then he has to go Easter-egg >hunting again trying to find the right delay value? > >trash, trash, trash. Can't say it enough. :) There was an extremely nice answer to this and similar posts published in the German CSS magazine in an article by Chrilly Donninger some time ago. It would simply be great if it could be put to the Web ; it explained how the autoplayer started and developped and really opened my eyes . After reading it I understood the problems of the autoplayer and the reasons for them much better . I don't know who holds the rights for it but it was a.) very convincing b.) understandable to any non-programmer guy , too . pete
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