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Djinn is written in C++ with a smattering of inline assembly.
It utilizes bitboards to represent the chess board and pieces. An
approach popularized by Robert Hyatt and his program Crafty.
Although to be honest, I've been interested in bitboards ever since I read
the Atkin and Slate paper on Chess 4.5 (circa 1978). I've always had a
hardware bent (I'm an Electrical Engineer by trade) and the elegance of
the idea was immediately apparent to me.
Djinn uses C++ as a better C. I don't take advantage of
inheritance or virtual functions or any of the other more esoteric C++
language features. Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, would
be disappointed and probably appalled by my code. Still its
organization is fairly clean and well commented so I'm not unduly
satisfied.
Djinn is a relatively slow searcher, reaching speeds of roughly
350-400 nodes/sec on an AMD Athlon 1800+ under Linux. As a
benchmark, Crafty is probably 2.5x faster on the same hardware, which explains some of the strength difference between the two
programs. Djinn spends most of its time in the evaluation
function. Because of the way I've structured the program (and
specifically the king safety) it is almost impossible for me to use
"lazy evaluation". I intend to integrate some form of lazy
evaluation into the program eventually, but it needs to be done
carefully so that I don't end up "throwing the baby out with the bath water".