Brian Pratt's Homepage

• 1: Welcome
  • 1.1: About Me
• 2: Projects
  • 2.1: Software
    • 2.1.1: Web Cloner
    • 2.1.2: Chess
    • 2.1.3: RCS
  • 2.2: RTOS
  • 2.3: Senior Project
  • 2.4: LANL Internship
  • 2.5: DES Cracker
  • 2.6: Digital Comm
• 3: Research
  • 3.1: FPGAs in Space
  • 3.2: SEU Mitigation
  • 3.3: Partial TMR
  • 3.4: Digital Comm
• 4: Docs
  • 4.1: Linux
  • 4.2: Mac OS X
  • 4.3: Other
• 5: Software
  • 5.1: Geolocator.app
  • 5.2: Awesome Ball
  • 5.3: AccSim
  • 5.4: Roomote
• 6: Resume
• 7: Contact

Chess

One of the interesting large programs I wrote as an undergraduate was the back end of a Chess program. The GUI for the program (using GTK) was provided and I got to design and implement all of the classes to operate the pieces, board and rules correctly. This was written completely in C++.

This was a large program--over 2000 lines of code for just the back end. It was large enough that a lot of planning was necessary to be able to implement it correctly. To help plan for this program, I created a design document to describe the classes that I would write to complete the program.

The chess program was a rewarding experience. It was another program that could be appreciated by non-computer majors! (Though they probably didn't understand the distinction between the graphical interface and the back end program when I tried to describe it...). It was fun to have a large program to be in charge of and have to deal with all of the details of planning and programming it.