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| title | description | date | series | categories | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hello Chess Friend | I started building a chess engine in Rust. Here it is. | 2023-12-29T08:29:00-08:00 | chess-friend | Tech |
|
I started [playing a lot of chess][chess-post] recently. As often happens with me, it wasn't very long until I started wondering how I could Do Programming To It.
I found the mostly excellent, occasionally vague and confusing [Chess Programming Wiki][cpwiki] and have been using that as a guide. It helpfully says this on it's [Getting Started][cpgs] page:
The very first step to writing a chess engine is to write a complete, bug free board representation that knows every rule of chess.
As a software engineer, the "bug free" bit cracks me up.
My engine is called ChessFriend. It uses [bitboards][cpbb] for its board representation. As of this post, I've managed to write a board representation that allows me to place pieces of both colors on any square, and I'm hacking away at the move generator. I've also written a small command line "board explorer" utility that can interact with my board representation. Of course, it has a pile of unit tests, helping me inch ever-so-slowly toward that blissful bug-free state.
It's written in Rust. I've [mostly][rust-bc-toot] avoided fighting with the borrow checker.
[chess-post]: {{< ref "chess" >}} [cpwiki]: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page [cpgs]: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Getting_Started [cpbb]: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Bitboards [rust-bc-toot]: https://mastodon.social/@erynofwales/111637122773195611