bob wrote:One more note. This "you guys searched the wrong version" is a red-herring. Every new version of my chess program, dating ALL the way back to 1968, including major versions, minor versions, or rewrites, had MAJOR parts of the earlier version included. You do not rewrite 30-40-50K lines of code for each version..
VR is not Hyatt. How often do you make that mistake.
My major versions (five times: v0, v1, v2, v3 and mscp) were always 100% rewrites from scratch, no code reuse between them. I'm not the only one.
Reminds me of a Tord quote, something like, you can never rewrite your engine from scratch too many times.
Define "your engine". Only a complete dunderhead would rewrite everything in the engine from scratch. That would imply you did NOTHING right in any of the previous versions...
bob wrote:
If that is true, you are one really unusual (and inefficient) software developer. You rewrote the move parsing (input and output) five times? Why? I won't ask about all the other things that rarely need to change.
One because languages changed. And two because it is no real effort, my coding style evolves and I like to have a consistent style within one program. And three because the purpose of the programs changed. Fourth, because sometimes you have to build one to throw away. And fifth and last, because I enjoy trying to make code easier to read than the time before. I know you don't care about style, you made crafty after all. But that is the point: you are unable to imagine that other people do things for different reasons than yours.
About efficiency: It took me 1200 logged hours to get v3 to beat Crafty consistently in 100-game single core matches. Maybe 1 hour of those is spent on move parsing. Move parsing is not a big deal. And I agree, I'm not a great programmer, because it shouldn't take that much effort to get to that level.
bob wrote:
If that is true, you are one really unusual (and inefficient) software developer. You rewrote the move parsing (input and output) five times? Why? I won't ask about all the other things that rarely need to change.
One because languages changed. And two because it is no real effort, my coding style evolves and I like to have a consistent style within one program. And three because the purpose of the programs changed. Fourth, because sometimes you have to build one to throw away. And fifth and last, because I enjoy trying to make code easier to read than the time before. I know you don't care about style, you made crafty after all. But that is the point: you are unable to imagine that other people do things for different reasons than yours.
About efficiency: It took me 1200 logged hours to get v3 to beat Crafty consistently in 100-game single core matches. Maybe 1 hour of those is spent on move parsing. Move parsing is not a big deal. And I agree, I'm not a great programmer, because it shouldn't take that much effort to get to that level.
I changed from Fortran to C. Big syntactical change. But much of the code did NOT change. Just a direct translation to C. Some even done by an old Zortech Fortran to C translator. Rewriting doesn't mean just translating to a new language.
If all you have to offer is just a cute pot-shot here and there (I know you don't care about style, shouldn't take that many hours to write something that can beat Crafty, etc) then carry on. Just shows the argument has reached its end.
But I will say it again, nobody starts from scratch 5 times keeping NOTHING. That is just a ridiculous way of developing code. If, after four attempts, you have not written ANYTHING worth saving, something is sadly wrong...
Interest in how Vas is doing, on this forum, will almost always, be a double-edge sword. Regardless of the well intentions of the inquirer.
Even garnering good news of his current situation would only relapse into the proverbial shark feeding frenzy that surrounded him upon his leaving the computer chess scene; and, God forbid bad news, would only feed into a more morbid assessment of the same.
It's over! It's been_over_now _for_years! The the dye has been cast -the deed was done.
At this point who are you-both trying to convince-other than yourselves.
It sounds like neither of you believe in your own arguments. And by convincing each other you are convincing yourselves.
That is what it sounds like.
At this point in time. Because nothing is going to change the course of what has taken place. Whether we like it or not the action has taken its toll on this hobby in ways that we are still measuring and have yet to full understand.
Here is what I find interesting - Please excuse my flippant sense of humor.
But it is ironic that the guy who has moved on and left the building in 2012 continues to be the topic of a thread here 2015 - with a bunch of guys - still stuck trying to square -or -come to terms with what happened before and after Rajlich left the building 2012.
He is, ironically, the only one who has left the ROOM!
