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Subject: Re: Adventures with Fritz

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 06:53:27 10/25/04

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On October 25, 2004 at 08:21:52, Uri Blass wrote:

>On October 25, 2004 at 04:22:36, Tony Werten wrote:
>
>>On October 25, 2004 at 03:27:00, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>
>>>On October 25, 2004 at 02:36:44, Tony Werten wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi Ed,
>>>>
>>>>have you made a testrun of 1 game, (hope it reproduces) under the different
>>>>settings.
>>>>
>>>>Most likely the logfiles will show a different (lower) knode speed. I can make
>>>>up several excuses for that.
>>>>
>>>>- At startup, chessengine and interface are fixed to a different processor,
>>>>meaning the second chessprogram gets the load of the interface as well (or any
>>>>other process that the interface initialises).
>>>>
>>>>- Engine 2 is initialised on a crappy memory alignment.
>>>>
>>>>- Time related rounding errors are every time rounded in 1 the first engines
>>>>favor.
>>>>
>>>>- All communication is handled as engine 1 first then engine 2 ( rather than
>>>>engine on the move, engine not to move ) so during the whole game, engine 1 gets
>>>>every information earlier than engine 2
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>If you feel the need, I'm pretty sure I can come up with some more :)
>>>>
>>>>Tony
>>>
>>>
>>>But my procedure has been always 100% the same except for the loaded engine at
>>>program start. Also I always reboot before I start a match. The issues you
>>>address were valid in match-1, match-2 and match-3, still there is this
>>>difference of 4.7%.
>>>
>>>What happened to Xinix? I can not believe your ranking, has fatherhood troubled
>>>your astuteness? Programming while feeding babies?
>>
>>:)
>>
>>Even with 6 years of experience, 1.5 month isn't enough for a complete rewrite,
>>changing from Delphi to C++, from single to dual and from x88 to bitboards.
>
>Why do you take task that is too hard for you?

Because there's no fun in only doing the things you can do.

>
>If I understand correctly you write a lot of code and then test and discover a
>lot of bugs.
>
>I think the correct way to program is to write something small and test that you
>do not have serious bugs.
>
>other ways mean that you probably need to spend more time on your program to
>have something free of bugs unless you are a genius.

Well, thank you. It seems to be bugfree now.

>
>
>>
>>I could have played with an old version, but that would have been rather
>>pointless.
>
>I think that it is pointless to play with a new version that you know that it is
>weaker.
>
>I understand using a version that you are not sure if it is better but not using
>a version that you know that it is weaker or a version that is totally untested.

I do. Always better than playing with a version you know you are not going to
develop any further.

>
>
> The 2nd weekend was already a lot better, with the engine playing
>>something that resembled chess, but there were still a lot of timing issues and
>>so on.
>>
>>Every now and then, the search would explode, (not returning) and it would
>>continue playing after a timeout of 6 minutes, while only actually having
>>reached 8 ply. It blew a good position against Nexus with 3 of those in a row :(
>>
>>All in all, I'm not unhappy with the result from 2nd weekend. It'll be better
>>next time.
>
>Unless you decide to do another rewrite.
>
>Personally I hate rewriting and I prefer to simply replace code step after step
>and test that there are no bugs in every step.
>
>I think that if I have an hard problem that means a lot of code to write then it
>is better not to attack the problem directly but think how to divide it to
>easier tasks.

Somehow I doubt that mixing Pascal and C++ and X88 and bitboards into one
program will make it a lot clearer.

Furthermore, it's much easier to implement multiprocessing in an empty program.

Tony

>
>Uri



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