Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: changes in the last minute before world championship

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 13:00:56 08/15/05

Go up one level in this thread


On August 15, 2005 at 15:49:30, Uri Blass wrote:

>I read the following comment:
>"It's easy to broke things in a complex system like a chess program and it's
>very dificult to discover bugs, they are likely not to be discovered with just a
>few days of testing."
>
>My opinion is that it is not correct.
>
>There may be changes that it is a big risk to do at the last moment without
>testing but at least some evaluation changes or implementing contempt factor can
>be done with no risk by good programmers.
>
>part of the test may be playing blitz games and if implementing the contempt
>factor does not cause problems in blitz games and give the expected result then
>the programmer can be almost sure that there is no problem with the new code.
>
>There is no need to use more than some hours of testing to get hundred of 1+0
>time control games and if change in the evaluation did not cause problems in 1+0
>time control games it will probably not cause problems also in longer time
>control(changes in the search seems to me something with bigger risk).
>
>Do you have examples that show that my opinion is wrong and changing things in
>the last moment cause problems in games inspite of the fact that no problem were
>discovered in tests.
>
>Note that I think that even changes in the move generator or in the search that
>seem more risky to me have probability of less than 1% to create problems if few
>hours of testing do not discover bugs in case that the programmer has good tools
>to detect bugs.
>
>What is your opinion?
>Is it risky to make changes in the last moment or is it only a problem of
>programmers who did not generate good tools to detect bugs and need to play many
>games at long time control for that purpose.

Without testing, it is clearly a mistake.

That is not an opinion, it's a fact.



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.