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Re: computer-go: Is the Go Modem Protocol used in actual tournaments ?


Absolutely you should make your code portable, and just adjust the GUI for
the operating system. In that sense your go engine is not written for any
OS in particular. I wrote Many Faces originally on RTE for the HP 1000, then
ported it to Unix, then to DOS, then to Windows-95. For a long time I maintained
the Unix GUI and Windows GUI independently, and used the unix environment
to find the more difficult bugs. But eventually the Windows development tools
became much better than those on HP-UX, so I switched to just developing on
Windows. But the go engine is straight ANSI C, and has been ported to
many platforms with out problems.

I haven't developed on Linux or Solaris, but Windows has a far superior development
environment than HP-UX. I've recently used the GCC toolset, and again the Windows
development environment is far superior (for C and C++ development).

The DOS port was the worst, but I had to do it sell the product. Living in 450KB
was very painful :)

David

At 12:13 AM 1/10/2001 +0100, you wrote:
Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Since I  am not  considering a  commercial program,  I stay with Unix,
> which in  my opinion is  superior.   But if I  wanted to  go into this
> commercially, it would be truly foolish to ignore Windows.

There is also a side benefit: Writing portable code forces you to write
cleaner code, and forbids many shortcuts that may later turn out to be more
expensive than expected. And testing on multiple platforms is one good way
to find some well-hidden bugs. Also, today Windows may be the best platform
for a detail-market program, but one day, if something like the Ing prize
will be available, one-off performance may be more relevant than mass market
appeal. And the day will come when Windows (at least as we know it now) is
not the obvious choice for anything.

-Heikki

--
Heikki Levanto     LSD Levanto Software Development   heikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
               "In Murphy we Turst"

David Fotland