Mussaurus 0.1-prealpha - a poor man's Vice

[Ovyron]

I'm a nobody that can't really speak as if representing the whole community of computer chess, but it is my belief that all the chess programmers that I've met or known about, did it because they enjoyed it. The instant gratification is to see the program grow, to see that ideas that they had and were implemented into the program made it play better chess, or that they didn't, so they discovered yet another thing that wouldn't work, in their search for something that did.

We have been fortunate enough that those people didn't keep their job to themselves, and that they shared it with us, because no matter how small a contribution is, it holds some value. Even this thread here, could possibly inspire other programmers that get very frustrated because of lack of feedback, that have the urge to delete everything they have done and abandon all hope, to wait for a bit, in case someone appears that says they enjoyed using the program, before it's too late.

I have seen passion in chess programmers, specially those that create open source engines and expect nothing in return. If you don't have it, then quitting it was a smart choice, because it was just a distraction from looking for your passion. Something you can do that you'll enjoy even if you get no feedback, even if nobody knows about what you're doing. Only then will you feel true gratification, and the satisfaction you got when you read someone enjoyed using Mussaurus will be peanuts by comparison.

[shinkarom]

The problem wasn't so much with the lack of feedback as with the code progressively getting sloppier and sloppier, spaghettier and spaghettier. I could already forecast that after some time the program would be a horrible mess with no hope of untangling the code. Its survival would depend on people doing pull requests with refactorings, but you have to be Stockfish to hope for that, because nobody would sacrifice their time and labor for a poor chess engine wannabe. Eventually, Mussaurus would be abandoned, and then who would need it. In this case better to put the failure out of its misery now than pretend it's going to make a difference.

[Ovyron]

It's like facing a much superior chess opponent and resigning the game after a few moves because, that guy was gonna beat you anyway, so what was the point of playing, right?

[shinkarom]

It's also not wanting to waste superior player's time and attention on much inferior player, because they will better spent elsewhere. That guy has his own life, his own problems, so it would be arrogant to ask him to play with the n00b, when this n00b cannot bring him any merit.
Don't most professional players resign when they see their game is lost? Continuing to play might lead to a humiliating mate, and would waste time and just postpone the inevitable. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/genera ... ut-to-lose

[Ovyron]

Don't most professional players resign when they see their game is lost?

No programmer in the history of computer chess that became champion, that had a top 1 rated engine at some point, or that made software for the enjoyment of hundreds of people knew in advance what they were going to achieve when they started.

This will be my last post on the thread, so I'll want to pass on the voice to Tord Romstad, the creator of today's top 1 engine Stockfish, who speaks about how it was a community effort, and about how the magic happened.

I still remember my
joy when I discovered the Winboard Forum about three years ago,
and found that even pathetically weak engines like my own (remember
that this was three years and approximately 500 Elo points ago) got
a warm and friendly welcome. I thought hardly anybody would be
interested in such a weak and buggy engine, but I couldn't have been
more wrong. Several people started playing tournaments with my
little program against other engines of similar strength, and my
mailbox exploded with games, tournament results, debug logs and
suggestions for improvements. I have been part of the community
ever since, watching my program crawl painfully slowly from the
lower half of the tournament tables towards the top. Without the
testers, I would have found myself a better hobby long ago, and my
program would be hundreds of rating points weaker than it currently is.

I am fairly sure my story is not unique. Testers like Leo Dijksman,
Heinz van Kempen, Olivier Deville, Patrick Buchmann and G�nther Simon
(and others) are among the greatest heroes of computer chess, and
deserve just as much praise as Vasik Rajlich and Fabien Letouzey.
Without their efforts, we wouldn't be where we are today. Some of
the current top programs wouldn't exist at all, and some of them would
have been much weaker.

It is fundamentally important that engines of *all* levels are tested,
and not just the best ones. Even for a talented programmer, developing
a top program takes a lot of time and hard work. There are certainly
some people who are patient enough to do all this hard work on their
own and only release their work when it is close to the best (Ruffian
springs to mind), but most of us would shy away from the efforts if
we were denied the pleasure of watching our programs be used even
in the early phases of development. Chess programming, like other
hobbies, has a social dimension, and it would be very unfortunate if
it were necessary to write a 2600+ engine before enjoying it.

At some point Glaurung was weaker and more buggy than Mussaurus, imagine if it was deleted because Tord didn't get feedback for 8 days. Today's chess landscape would be completely different. But Tord had no idea about what would happen, his magnum opus came as a surprise.

But nothing happens if you let the snowball melt in your hand instead of throwing it.

[shinkarom]

Thank you for giving me much more attention than I deserve, for listening patiently and for words of encouragement.