Jaman_khan's blog

Use pronounceable names
By Jaman_khan, 22 months ago, In English

I encountered an issue during today's Codeforces contest that I believe is worth discussing. Codeforces is an excellent platform for competitive programming, but I've noticed that the names used in recent Codeforces Round 957 (Div. 3) problem statements are often non-standard and difficult to pronounce. This has caused me significant trouble in understanding the problem statements. I hope that in the future, more care will be taken in choosing names that are clear and accessible to all participants.

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22 months ago, hide # |
 
Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

Auto comment: topic has been updated by Jaman_khan (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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22 months ago, hide # |
 
Vote: I like it -51 Vote: I do not like it
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22 months ago, hide # |
 
Vote: I like it -23 Vote: I do not like it

Is the problem that you cannot differentiate between words and names? If you can, the names do not matter. In addition, names are just for the storyline most of the time.

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    22 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
    Vote: I like it +59 Vote: I do not like it

    Why do they even use unnecessary, useless stories in problem statements? I always want them to provide short, crisp, to the point problem statements.

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      22 months ago, hide # ^ |
       
      Vote: I like it -26 Vote: I do not like it

      Then go to LeetCode and enjoy 10k+ ChatGPT solutions in every round.

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        22 months ago, hide # ^ |
         
        Vote: I like it +18 Vote: I do not like it

        Even more than half submissions in codeforces are copied.We need to make something like codeforces police to catch out the cheater something which will remove the ai effect then compare and so we can put the cheater tag on the cheaters

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        22 months ago, hide # ^ |
        ← Rev. 3  
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        umm I don't think codeforces problems are solvable by chat GPT? And I'm not sure if those stories will make it difficult for chat GPT to solve. Moreover, Codeforces has had problem statements without stories. Look at this one: 1703F - Yet Another Problem About Pairs Satisfying an Inequality. I just want them to make every problem statement on codeforces like this.

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      22 months ago, hide # ^ |
      ← Rev. 2  
      Vote: I like it +64 Vote: I do not like it

      I think stories which make the statement more understandable than formulas are acceptable. But to people including me who do not use English often, these story statements mostly give them huge difficulty to understand what they should do. Sometimes feels like I spent so much effort for a lot of messages which aren't useful for me to solve the problem. I think Atcoder does better on this.

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      22 months ago, hide # ^ |
       
      Vote: I like it -12 Vote: I do not like it

      the stories add to the enjoyment imo

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    22 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
    Vote: I like it +26 Vote: I do not like it

    I think it's when there are multiple unpronounceable names, and they all begin with the same letter, then they're really difficult to keep track of while reading the problem statement.

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    22 months ago, hide # ^ |
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    Vote: I like it +29 Vote: I do not like it

    Why are names (such as k1o0n) that are difficult to pronounce given in the problem statement? Such names often delay the understanding of the problem statement. Can't understandable names (such as Alice, and Bob) be used instead of such names?

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22 months ago, hide # |
 
Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

Often,the non-standard names used are the ids of contest purposers.So I think it will be helpful to check the ids of authors and contributers in advance.

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    22 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
    Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

    Some contests before would color their ids just like these shown on codeforces platfrom(color indicating their rank),so I think we should advocate coloring names in latter contests.(like making a widely recongnize custom doing this)

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