Author: Peter McKenzie
Date: 21:39:50 08/30/03
Go up one level in this thread
On August 30, 2003 at 14:37:44, Tord Romstad wrote: >My program has reached the stage where it is so complicated and ugly that I >no longer understand clearly how it works (it's rather miraculous that it >works at all), and there are many parts of the code which I am afraid of >touching because I am sure I will break something. Besides, the program >is horribly slow, searching only about 120 kN/s on a PIV 2.4 GHz. > >Because of this, I think it is time to throw away all the old code and >start from scratch. Before I do this, I will consider replacing my >data structures with something more efficient. Hello Tord. Sounds to me like you have a basic software engineering problem that you are hoping will be magically solved by a rewrite. What is to guarantee that if you do a rewrite, you won't find yourself in a similar position in 6 months time? Sure you might have bitboards, but if you don't understand how your current program works then why should you understand how a new program works? In general, my belief is that a rewrite should be a last resort to solve such problems. I think you'll gain more by writing unit tests for your existing codebase, then take a refactoring approach. The unit tests will allow you to safely refactor your existing code, because they will pick up anything you break. The main benefits of this approach are: - you keep a working program throughout the process - you can keep the good parts of the existing program, and fix the bad parts - you learn more about the mistakes you have made Just my 2c worth. cheers, Peter <snip>
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.