GUI x Engine development: please listen to customers!

[Ponti]

Well, as an amateur chess player I can´t win against most of the top engines, so I use them to analyse positions. Maybe chess masters only think about stronger engines, but us mere mortals don´t. I don´t care anymore if an engine is X times stronger than Fritz, because Fritz is much more stronger than me.

GUI, in my opinion, are not as well developed. There are plenty of features that could be improved... but we still see more and more new engines been developed, although they are weaker then the ones already in the market.

The best GUIs available do not change so much after each version (take for instance C.A., it does not change !). Why that happens ? Do companies listen to their customers or not ? C.B. seems to be also only interested in selling new engines and a few new features in each new version...

[lucasart]

It's a shame cutechess developpement has stopped. This one was really on the right track.

[hgm]

GUI, in my opinion, are not as well developed. There are plenty of features that could be improved...

Well, name some. If I was aware of any it would already have been done...

[Henk]

There is only one good solution write a GUI and an engine yourself. So if there is something wrong with it you can change it if you can. But problem is that it takes much time.

[hgm]

Open source is a solution where you don't have to write it yourself, but still can change what you want to work differently.

[Henk]

Open source is a solution where you don't have to write it yourself, but still can change what you want to work differently.

I don't like any other people's code too.

Strange that there are so many technical discussions about engines and so few about GUI's.

Also it's easy to make mistakes in your data model when storing games in a database. Haven't seen any posts about that topic.

[hgm]

Well, it is a trade off. Either use other people's code to get the performance you want and be ready in a month, or put in some 10 man-years of development work yourself...

[Henk]

Well, it is a trade off. Either use other people's code to get the performance you want and be ready in a month, or put in some 10 man-years of development work yourself...

The only reason why I work on this is keeping myself active. But problem is that you don't have time for other hobbies. Also chess becomes more boring the more time you spend on it.

[hgm]

There is nothing against keeping yourself active and achieve results at the same time.

[Modern Times]

Also chess becomes more boring the more time you spend on it.

That has been absolutely true for me, which is why I hardly spend time on it these days.