Re: [gnugo-devel] Offer to help

[Arend Bayer]

Hi Louis,


> > I am a C/C++ programmer with a lot of free time on my hands (unemployed
> > right now - so what else is new ;) ) and volunteering to help with
> > GnuGo.  First time I've worked on a open source project; not sure where
> > to go from here.  Am willing to debug as a starter; at any rate, let me
> > know how I can fit in.

Feel welcome to join!

> A start is to subscribe to the mailing list if you have not
> done so, follow the discussions and familiarize yourself with
> the existing source. Asking questions in the list is welcome.

In the archive you will also find two replies to your e-mail by Paul
and Evan (I think they  forgot to CC: you) with some starting
suggestions.

The best thing to get to know the code is really to start trying to fix
things, i.e. understand what went wrong for a bad move, etc.

One thing that needs improvement and that might (or might not...) be a
good starting points are "thrashing dragons". That's what we call a dragon
that is believed to be dead, but where the opponent has nevertheless just
added a stone. If we are ahead, we want to play safe in this case and
constrain this dragon. But the heuristics we are currently using for
this need improvement.

Arend