TalkChess.com

lucasart wrote:

velmarin wrote: By the way, would dare you to improve Fire o IvanHoe , would be a challenge.
If only a few ELO points.

It's *very hard* to improve such engines! Even by a few elo. That is why, I am saying that Matthew and Dimitry, given their lack of experience, should start with a more modest goal.

I find the IvanHoe source code (or any Ippo engine) truly horrible. Yes, it's a very strong engine elo-wise, but the source code is really an un-maintainable mess. At least it doesn't make *me* want to maintain it.

The only strong open source engine I would like to toy with is Stockfish. The problem is that I don't have time at my disposal:
- first, I would have to stop DiscoCheck, and dedicate my 8-cores only to testing SF patches
- second, it's not fun! Everything in Stockfish is already done and so well optimized. The only room left for improvement is minor tweaks that take a few minutes to code, and several days to test. It's 0.1% code, and 99.9% CPU testing time, and waiting... In DiscoCheck, there are still many things to improve, and even to rethink. One really big work will be to implement SMP, but the task is really daunting, so I've always post-poned it.

Regarding apologies, I was perhaps a bit harsh on Matthew, especially given his young age. But one I will *not* apologize to is Ed Schroder... The eternal Rybka/Fruit spammer... The one who single handedly fills the EO forum...

Thank you for your apology.

Quite a few people in TCEC commented on how harsh your post is.

Now if you don't mind, we would like to release Firenzina 2.3 this week.

Matthew:out

You are getting a free pass more frequently now because of your age...
You made a silly post about chess engine naming which nobody gives a damn about.While you do that you also made an accusation to Luca's engine. Six pages of useless discussion followed from that. That makes you a troll in my book.

Daniel Shawul wrote:You are getting a free pass more frequently now because of your age...
You made a silly post about chess engine naming which nobody gives a damn about.While you do that you also made an accusation to Luca's engine. Six pages of useless discussion followed from that. That makes you a troll in my book.

Fine. If I am a persona non grata, I'll leave.

Matthew:out

lucasart wrote:

velmarin wrote: By the way, would dare you to improve Fire o IvanHoe , would be a challenge.
If only a few ELO points.

It's *very hard* to improve such engines! Even by a few elo. That is why, I am saying that Matthew and Dimitry, given their lack of experience, should start with a more modest goal.

I find the IvanHoe source code (or any Ippo engine) truly horrible. Yes, it's a very strong engine elo-wise, but the source code is really an un-maintainable mess. At least it doesn't make *me* want to maintain it.

The only strong open source engine I would like to toy with is Stockfish. The problem is that I don't have time at my disposal:
- first, I would have to stop DiscoCheck, and dedicate my 8-cores only to testing SF patches
- second, it's not fun! Everything in Stockfish is already done and so well optimized. The only room left for improvement is minor tweaks that take a few minutes to code, and several days to test. It's 0.1% code, and 99.9% CPU testing time, and waiting... In DiscoCheck, there are still many things to improve, and even to rethink. One really big work will be to implement SMP, but the task is really daunting, so I've always post-poned it.

Regarding apologies, I was perhaps a bit harsh on Matthew, especially given his young age. But one I will *not* apologize to is Ed Schroder... The eternal Rybka/Fruit spammer... The one who single handedly fills the EO forum...

I have no idea where the last sentence come from, but any member of this forum is allowed and encouraged to contribute topics in their respective sub-forum. Let's not divert this thread, which is in the general forum, into a R/F thread.

Back to the engine names, rather than calling other people names,

Miguel
EDIT: I see that there is a previous exchanged with Ed that I missed... Still my overall call stands, let's not divert this even more.

lucasart wrote:Now if you think that 1/ and 2/ are a "lot more than what Vasik took from Fruit", the question becomes: how much did Vasik take from Fruit? I have neither time nor interest to debate this point with you. But when I read your never ending posts, or articles on your website about that subject, I realize that you have nothing but time...

1. First mistake, there is nothing on my pages since a long time, I deleted all except a few that are linked to the FIDE complaint and must stay until the case is handled by the FIDE.

2. Second mistake, like it or not, unlike you there are quite some programmers who disagree with the ICGA verdict, that's a fact. Try to live with that. So when reading your rant I see the hypocrisy and refer to the R/F case as a statement without any intention to open the debate.

Fogo - portuguese for fire
Alicia - the singer of Girl on fire...

- FireBreath
- FireWork

From Magic the Gathering :

- FireBolt
- Fire Elemental
- Lightning Bolt

sedicla wrote:Fogo - portuguese for fire
Alicia - the singer of Girl on fire...

Great, now i have the song stuck in my head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus

How much do you value your liver?

Seriously though, it's a funny choice; a nod to Fire, and a smile to those who would bind you to the stone.

DB

It's not by taking other programs, putting your name on them and making trivial modifications that you will ever learn anything. Learning requires humility and time, there's no magic shortcut.

You can read all you want in the chess programming wiki, and forum post, but the reality is: until have written a chess engine yourself, you basically don't know/understand anything. There are so many things that look "simple" in theory, and you'll have to figure out in a real implementation.

I'm with Lucas on this one. His language is harsh but his points are valid.

Speaking generally, if a prospective chess engine author desires an intellectual challenge and wants to improve his programming skills, he starts from scratch. He has to be able to separate the strength of the engine from his self esteem. Yes, the engine he produces will not be world class. But it will be original and he will have learned a lot in the process. He will have sharpened his programming skills, and may apply those skills to other non-chess projects.

If a prospective author is worried that producing an engine of modest playing strength reflects poorly on his ability or wounds his self esteem, he starts from a world class codebase. (Not exclusively- there are some legitimate re-engineering efforts. But let's be honest, there also is a lot of hacking.) If he respects all the relevant licenses, then I have no qualms with his effort. However, I suspect authors that start from a world class codebase are motivated more by glory than by education.

I am sympathetic to those suffering the brunt of Lucas' criticism. I've been attacked, albeit indirectly, for writing an engine in a... horror of horrors, managed language: C#. But that's OK. I'm in it for the education. I can take what I learn from chess programming (especially defensive programming techniques and performance optimization) and apply it to other projects- including projects in my professional life.