DarkKnight32's blog

Codeforces became sloppy

By DarkKnight32, history, 7 years ago, In English

For the past few months the majority of the contest was bad, either because wrong statements, unclear statements, wrong test. So why is that ?

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7 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +19 Vote: I do not like it

The contest today wasn't that bad either.
It was his first time, so he tried to make problem A also non-trivial. Anyway, some people encourage stories in problems. I personally don't and have a feeling that majority doesn't like it. The statements could be made shorter and easy to read.
This is what CF rounds must check too. AtCoder also follows this.

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    7 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +4 Vote: I do not like it

    It's not about today's contest, Well it counts but if you review the past 20 contest you'll see that there's a problem in most of them (not all of them), mostly the problems don't affect many participants but they still exist.

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      7 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

      You sure?
      I gave Tinkoff round, and it was pretty challenging and I loved it.
      I think you should not get frustrated so easily. Its not that easy to prepare a contest as you think.

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7 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -25 Vote: I do not like it

Today's contest was really good, made you think and work for every single problem. Either you're biased since your (probably) didn't do well or i'm biased since i did reasonably well.

Honestly I don't get why you are going to certify contests as "good" or "bad" , when the only job is to practice and solve problems.

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    7 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +45 Vote: I do not like it

    Today's contest was actually disgusting. Do you seriously think that 1300+ hacks on A are ok? Statements were also extremely annoying, especially for problem A.

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      7 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it -26 Vote: I do not like it

      Why shouldn't there be many hacks on A? Statements being hard to comprehend, is something that's part and parcel of a problem. I strongly disagree with your opinion on the same.

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        7 years ago, # ^ |
        ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +56 Vote: I do not like it

        Holy crap, that's div2A! It's the problem designed to introduce you to the contest and encourage you to go further through the contest! But what did we find today?

        1. Extremely long & misleading statement. The author should have atleast drawn pictures explaining the samples. It's no fun guessing whether some particular turn has an intersection with a pedestrian cross or not.

        2. Goddamn pretests. Really, they didn't decline the dumbest solution possible (solving the problem independently for each road).

        3. Hacks are good when they are not many and require some skill to design them. Not what we saw here, huh?

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          7 years ago, # ^ |
          ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it -43 Vote: I do not like it

          About 3. — Why so? Is it .. like.. documented anywhere? Or is it just your own opinion that you postulate for some reason?

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            7 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it +44 Vote: I do not like it

            Many hacks is a bad thing pretty much because hacking is the thing that REALLY depends on luck. You might be in a room where everyone ends up with a correct solution instantly or you might be hacking all contest long and end up being first place like today.

            Hacks are pretty hard to balance via giving problems specific scoring. You can't know for sure whether "this problem is worth 10 hacks and this is worth 20"

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            7 years ago, # ^ |
            ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +41 Vote: I do not like it

            The reasons are quite simple.

            1. One hack is worth one hundred points. That means that a luckier contestant can easily get several hundred more points with no serious effort just because there are more stupid solutions in his room. If you're still not convinced, take a look at the second place overall. Ain't that funny that the only contestant with all problems solved is lower than the one with eleven hacks?

            2. Lots of hacks are the result of nice pretests. I always thought that they are designed to prevent people from submitting blindly, but now I'm not that sure.

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          7 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +30 Vote: I do not like it

          It has become a routine that, solve DIV2 A,B then, instead of solving C make some simple hack case and hack. And have a better rating than those who solve C and sometime D

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            7 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it -31 Vote: I do not like it

            Well, if people prefer to get a higher ratings instead of actually solving problems it's up to them

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              7 years ago, # ^ |
                Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

              But the whole point of the rating system should be to reward those who solve problems! Not what happened today.

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      7 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it

      If u just can't code trivial problem correctly, why do u think u have qualification to judge the problem?

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7 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

We are waiting for PrinceOfPersia to hold another round and save Codeforces.

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