JRjrudesill·Mar 2, 2023
The engine is a WASM implementation of the stockfish 11 engine. https://github.com/nmrugg/stockfish.js
In Show HN: Chess2 – Play live online chess against a friend, or a chess enginenmrugg
stockfish.js
C++2022–2023
nmrugg / stockfish.js
stockfish.js
The Stockfish chess engine for web browsers
5Distinct people
5Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The Stockfish chess engine for web browsers
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month5 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-02-24 12:47:46 UTC to 2023-03-02 16:37:25 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2022 | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Mar 2022 | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
5 sourcesInteresting. I was looking at the algorithm in evaluate.cpp [0] and it seems to be the case that the control flow is pretty much just an alternative to if-statements... which, personally, I find to be more readable than it'd otherwise be if it were heavily nested. I'm open to arguments otherwise, though.
Consider two alternatives (written in pseudo-Javascript, I guess):
let xyz = 0;
if (!condition1) {
doSomething();
xyz = getValueSomehow();
if (!condition2) {
doSomethingElse();
xyz += getSomeOtherValueSomehow();
}
}
finishUpBusinessLogic();
return xyz;
that seems much less readable than:
let xyz = 0;
if (condition1)
goto done;
doSomething();
xyz = getValueSomehow();
if (condition2)
goto done;
doSomethingElse();
xyz += getSomeOthe
Read the rest
rValueSomehow();
done:
finishUpBusinessLogic();
return xyz;
0: https://github.com/nmrugg/stockfish.js/blob/d96c98872103c60b...
There are a total of 5 gotos in the codebase¹. That's not bad for a chess engine which is heavily optimized for runtime performance above all other considerations.
¹ https://github.com/nmrugg/stockfish.js/search?q=goto&type=
In Stockfish.jshttps://github.com/nmrugg/stockfish.js/search?q=goto
Five occurrences of goto, for anyone that's curious. The code is pretty easy to read, good variable names, some explanatory comments. The gotos don't make spaghetti. I'm inclined to think the writers knew what they were doing, though goto offends my sensibilities as much as anyone.
Could anyone with more experience explain the pattern? Why gotos for control flow along with >thousand line functions?
In Stockfish.js