Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 09:36:12 08/25/99
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On August 25, 1999 at 04:56:33, Peter McKenzie wrote: >On August 25, 1999 at 01:29:55, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >> >>On August 24, 1999 at 22:02:33, James Robertson wrote: >> >>>I was looking at my code and noticed that I never get any cutoffs when there is >>>no available hash move. >> >>I don't understand this. >> >>> I modifed my code a little, and it sped up, but then I >>>noticed tactical problems; >> >>Are you fixing bugs or trying to make it go faster? If you were trying to fix >>something, why are you checking speed? >> >>>on a certain test position it never finds a fairly >>>obvious move. Anyway, here is my hash code in my search function. >> >>You aren't sounding like someone who is in control of your code. > >Such a way with words :-) Yeah, I sound pretty harsh there, although I tried to soften it in the part you snipped. But it's one area where I'm a little religious. I think that it is important to understand what software is doing, and avoid fixing bugs by experimentation. Especially in a chess program. The things are so volatile because the process takes place in a tree, which is hard to debug. Almost any change will make a bug disappear more often than not, meaning that you can "fix" a search bug by a change in eval, because the tree shape changes enough that the bug doesn't manifest. It is possible, and I believe necessary, to understand bugs in chess programs. It takes a lot of effort sometimes, but it pays off. bruce
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