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Subject: Re: Length of time for Move_Gen()?

Author: Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz

Date: 14:26:58 02/15/04

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On February 15, 2004 at 17:14:07, Tord Romstad wrote:

>Hi Andrew,
>
>This has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but it is so important that
>I would like to repeat it:
>
>Don't worry about the speed of your move generation function!  Concentrate
>on making it correct, rather than on making it fast.  Then finish the rest of
>your program.  When you finally have a program that is able to play chess,
>try to improve your search function.  This is the number 1 factor which
>determines how fast your program is.  Don't try to increase the number
>of nodes per second, try to reduce the number of nodes you need to reach
>a certain search depth!  The improvements you gain by improving your
>search are incomparably bigger than those you get by optimizing your
>move generation function.
>
>When your search is finally beginning to look very efficient, you can
>consider profiling your program.  If it turns out that it spends a significant
>fraction of its time generating moves (which is rather unlikely), you can
>return to the move generation function.
>
>It is often said that premature optimization is the root of all evil in
>programming.  I think this is even more dangerous in chess
>programming than elsewhere.  Premature optimization is the number
>one reason why many programmers spend a very long time before they
>have a working and bug-free program, and it is the most important
>factor which slows down their speed of improvement while the program
>is young.
>
>Tord

And this is not the first time you give this advice!
It was actually you who firstly convinced me that I shouldn't get obsessed with
the speed of the move generators (and others) at the early stages. I'm doing my
best to forget about that myself, but it's really hard for a person like me....
:(
Any recent improvements in your program?
Regards,

 Jaime

• Re: Length of time for Move_Gen()? Tord Romstad 02:10:37 02/16/04
  • for Tord Matthias Gemuh 02:54:48 02/16/04
    • Re: for Tord Tord Romstad 03:22:02 02/16/04
      • Re: for Tord Matthias Gemuh 04:34:07 02/16/04
        • Re: for Tord Tord Romstad 06:17:49 02/16/04
      • Re: for Tord Uri Blass 04:28:56 02/16/04
        • I will do that soon. Thanks. (n/t). Matthias Gemuh 05:06:46 02/16/04

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