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Subject: Re: Open Source Chess Programs

Author: William Hoggarth

Date: 14:54:41 06/07/05

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On June 07, 2005 at 13:52:10, Tord Romstad wrote:
>Glaurung is also quite small (and the next version will almost certainly
>be smaller), and the code is designed to be as clear and straightforward
>as possible.  I seem to have failed spectacularly; it appears that most
>people find it very difficult to read.  I would appreciate if somebody
>could try to explain me why, and help me to make future versions more
>instructive.

I have looked at your code for Glaurung recently. I would make three suggestions
to improve readability for beginners:

1) More frequent and detailed comments

Compare with TSCP which has plenty of detailed comments about what's going on.
Explain you data structures as they are the key to understanding the program.

2) Eliminate tricks

Try to replace things like <<3 and & 15 etc. with a macro that has a more
meaningful name, so people can understand what's going on.

3) Long names

Try to use meaningful names for macros, variables and functions. Your source
code isn't too bad in this respect but there are still some names which are too
short.

These are the points that immediately come to mind.

HTH.



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