Imposter syndrome and writing chess engines

[algerbrex]

This is a bit of an odd topic for me to bring up, admittedly. But I'm curious what others' views are.

Most have heard of imposter syndrome, particularly when it comes to programming knowledge and abilities. And while I experience this from time to time, I mostly experience this when working on Blunder.

Often I'll implement a new feature and get it working well and feel some excitement, but this excitement is usually dampened by feeling like I don't really understand what I'm doing, and if every bit of the source code for Blunder were deleted from the face of the earth, I'd never be able to re-write it properly.

Now, I fully acknowledge and will continue to acknowledge for as long as I keep working on Blunder that I didn't get to where I am by myself, as nice as that might be to say. I've had inspiration and help from countless people here, and across different websites, forms, severs, and the like. And many people's codebases and engines have given me brilliant ideas.

With that said, all of the code in Blunder was written by hand, never copy and pasted, and there are areas that I wholly wrote myself. I've worked hard to debug issues, test the engine pretty consistently, and implement features in a way that works in my unique codebase. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel I haven't actually done anything worth being proud of or calling my own.

I'm curious how others generally feel about this topic. Just sharing my two cents.

[mclane]

I wonder why people still try to get HIGHER ELO instead of producing a more interesting engine,
Komodo and stockfish have reached such a high ELO, i wonder why programmers still try to increase the elo instead of building an engine that is “interesting”.

With interesting i mean an engine that plays DIFFERENT then A, AB or Stockfish engines,

[Chessqueen]

I wonder why people still try to get HIGHER ELO instead of producing a more interesting engine,
Komodo and stockfish have reached such a high ELO, i wonder why programmers still try to increase the elo instead of building an engine that is “interesting”.

With interesting i mean an engine that plays DIFFERENT then A, AB or Stockfish engines,

You are correct all programmers should focus more in building interesting engines like Komodo Dragon

[mclane]

Komodo and Stockfish is boring. Like fritz was.

LC0 and neuronal net engines are interesting. Or B strategy engines.
Bevause they are not perfect.

[algerbrex]

I wonder why people still try to get HIGHER ELO instead of producing a more interesting engine,
Komodo and stockfish have reached such a high ELO, i wonder why programmers still try to increase the elo instead of building an engine that is “interesting”.

With interesting i mean an engine that plays DIFFERENT then A, AB or Stockfish engines,

Eh, probably because Elo is a very visible metric of improvement, and it's fun for many, including myself, to push the limits of what their engine is capable of.

But the boring-ness that can occur from this is not lost on me, and some of the choices I've made in Blunder were specifically kept because they bettered its playing style or originality.

Depending on how strong I can make Blunder 8.0.0, which will hopefully be released within the next 2-3 weeks, then I'm going to begin experimenting with a custom NN for Blunder. And eventually MCTS will be something I'm going to began interacting with as well.

[Uri Blass]

I wonder why people still try to get HIGHER ELO instead of producing a more interesting engine,
Komodo and stockfish have reached such a high ELO, i wonder why programmers still try to increase the elo instead of building an engine that is “interesting”.

With interesting i mean an engine that plays DIFFERENT then A, AB or Stockfish engines,

Eh, probably because Elo is a very visible metric of improvement, and it's fun for many, including myself, to push the limits of what their engine is capable of.

But the boring-ness that can occur from this is not lost on me, and some of the choices I've made in Blunder were specifically kept because they bettered its playing style or originality.

Depending on how strong I can make Blunder 8.0.0, which will hopefully be released within the next 2-3 weeks, then I'm going to begin experimenting with a custom NN for Blunder. And eventually MCTS will be something I'm going to began interacting with as well.

You can define a different visible metric of improvement.

1)Finding mates faster.
2)Winning faster from winning positions(less moves to mate).
3)Getting a better result against weak engines with a knight material handicap or bigger material handicap.

[Lazy_Frank]

I wonder why people still try to get HIGHER ELO instead of producing a more interesting engine,
Komodo and stockfish have reached such a high ELO, i wonder why programmers still try to increase the elo instead of building an engine that is “interesting”.

With interesting i mean an engine that plays DIFFERENT then A, AB or Stockfish engines,

Indeed, programmers really think Elo-wise engine is best engine.
I assume most programmers knows programming at least in average + level and at the best are average chess players.

[Ovyron]

With that said, all of the code in Blunder was written by hand, never copy and pasted, and there are areas that I wholly wrote myself. I've worked hard to debug issues, test the engine pretty consistently, and implement features in a way that works in my unique codebase. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel I haven't actually done anything worth being proud of or calling my own.

Compare yourself with others that modify a few numbers from search.cpp or evaluate.cpp of stockfish and feel entitled to change the program's name, put themselves as authors, and sometimes even close the source and sell the engine. And then they feel proud of calling that their own. And they get tested a lot by others that want to know if their modifications are better than default stockfish.

If people can do so little and feel proud and something as their own, what stops you, if you did so much more?

[smatovic]

Imposter syndrome -> reverse Dunning-Kruger effect?

[...]
So it is sometimes claimed that it includes the reverse effect for people with high skill.[2][8][4] On this view, the Dunning-Kruger effect also concerns the tendency of highly skilled people to underestimate their abilities relative to the abilities of others.
[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E ... ger_effect

I like the Christian saying,"Judge them by their fruits", or alike.

--
Srdja

[algerbrex]

With that said, all of the code in Blunder was written by hand, never copy and pasted, and there are areas that I wholly wrote myself. I've worked hard to debug issues, test the engine pretty consistently, and implement features in a way that works in my unique codebase. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel I haven't actually done anything worth being proud of or calling my own.

Compare yourself with others that modify a few numbers from search.cpp or evaluate.cpp of stockfish and feel entitled to change the program's name, put themselves as authors, and sometimes even close the source and sell the engine. And then they feel proud of calling that their own. And they get tested a lot by others that want to know if their modifications are better than default stockfish.

If people can do so little and feel proud and something as their own, what stops you, if you did so much more?

All very true. I fully admit this is more of a peculiar issue with myself than an actual problem.

I think I've always just had this desire, even when I first started programming, to be a "real programmer." Someone who could create a project, like a chess engine, by themselves with no outside help. Of course, I realize this is unrealistic, especially for someone like myself who has only been programming now for 5-6 years. But my mind acts oddly sometimes I suppose.