Author: Stuart Cracraft
Date: 12:10:54 09/19/04
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On September 19, 2004 at 14:03:52, martin fierz wrote: >[snip] > >hi stuart, > >you seem to be very active programming your engine if the number of posts here >at CCC is any indication. i guess you have put in all the basic stuff in your >engine, and now it's playing some decent chess but is getting bashed on by the >stronger engines, and you're not happy. > >i made a similar experience. after years of checkers programming, i started >writing a chess program, which played it's first game about one month after i >started on it, and improved in leaps and bounds for a couple of months, which >was no big surprise to me since i'm rather familar with most of the techniques >for chess programming from my checkers program. >after half a year progress got slower, and after 9 months i couldn't detect any >progress any more. i let it lie around for half a year now, and will try to find >areas of improvement. but i think that from now on, progress is not so simple >any more. i will have to take a good look at my evaluation for instance, and at >the various extensions, and do a lot of testing. i don't believe there is any >magic bullet that will do the trick. once you reach a certain level, every >further improvement will have to be earned the hard way. > >in this sense, i encourage you to keep working on your engine, without resorting >to this kind of 'senior programmer to the rescue' attitude! > >cheers > martin I pulled back on an extension idea today and reduced another extension and the program reached 250 out of 300 on WAC. So that's a "good weekend" for me at this point. That I have two more days beyond today off to work on it makes it only taste sweeter. I saved the version under "4.06" and it is filed in the dusty history book area. I appreciated your interesting feedback. My comments tend toward the sarcastic, often outlandish, and sometimes ridiculous when I hit a brick wall -- and it often helps. Either I get stirred up enough to try a different approach, or take time away. I've thought of getting the books A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants to stir the creative juices again. Not sure it would help for programming which seems to be one of the strangest singular scientific/artistic artforms in the universe. My last program died its death 5+ years ago and I stepped away from programming from then until this past June -- so I know what you mean about taking a sabbatical. Obviously it helped. The latest program clobbers me. One goal down. I am paralleling your experience of asymptotic progress at 3 months. My progress was at least 10x faster due to advice from the programmers on this forum. It would have taken at least 3 years to get this far (if ever, I would have probably given up instead.) That's a testament to this board. The *reason* my last program failed is due to not taking this board more seriously. This time I did not make that error. Bob hinted that there is no substitute for hard work or other people's code, I think in relation to parallelizing, but his comment can be expanded to the whole subject of computer chess program improvement. For me, the hard work is trying to integrate other people's ideas. Cheers, Stuart
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