Shuaib's blog

Feedback on codeforces format
By Shuaib, 14 years ago, In English
I realize that CodeForces team would have come up with the codeforces format after giving in a lot of thought, and getting good feedback from their friends. And that they would have also got more feedback now from codeforces community here. But... to make it count, here is a negative feedback.

Guys, the format, simply put, is very boring. After you solve a question or two, you keep on wondering whether to go ahead trying the next problem, or to lock your previous ones and go on a hacking spree. And you wonder what others would be doing. It would be much better to have one work flow for all. Instead of half the participants solving problems, other half hacking them.

I thought you guys had a chat app around here. Is that still here or was that removed? It is always fun to talk to others about the problem set after the round is over.

Having said that... Excellent work guys. Loving it that CodeForces is progressing so quick, and getting quite a bit of focus from big Internet players, and getting sponsorships. Please keep good problem sets rolling in. 
  • Vote: I like it
  • +5
  • Vote: I do not like it

14 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +12 Vote: I do not like it
> (1) Guys, the format, simply put, is very boring.

> (2) After you solve a question or two, you keep on wondering whether to go ahead trying the next problem, or to lock your previous ones and go on a hacking spree. And you wonder what others would be doing.

In my opinion, (1) contradicts (2). Specifically, what's so boring in it? Having more choice than usual?
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  • 14 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it
    In my opinion, that leads to unnecessary distraction.

    When you have solved initial few easy problems, and arrive at the harder ones, there are two ways to go:

    1- You give the harder problem a shot, you either solve it, or consume all your time and gain no points. 
    2- You assume it would eat up all your remaining time and still not get anywhere close to solving, thus you skip any more problem solving, and instead focus on hacking others' solutions for points.

    I think this leads to a more "who gets more points" approach, overall in the round, instead of who is able to come up with nice solutions to the actual problems, the latter of which I guess should be the actual focus of a match.
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    • 14 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it
      Hmm, we can think of it this way:

      Sure, the format distracts us from spending a fixed amount of time on trying to solve as much problems as possible. Instead, it tempts to concentrate on easier problems and read others' solutions. Then, we guess what bugs would be common and search for them, or just find specific bugs in individual solutions. Reading the solutions, we better understand what are the good and bad ways of solving an easy problem. Ideally, this improves the skill of solving easy problems, thus we spend less time on them, and are more tempted to try harder problems.

      The faster you are, the less solutions you have to hack, the more incentive to try the next problem.
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14 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it
I would like to disagree. Reading other people's code and finding bugs in them also requires tremendous skill, albeit a different kind of skill. If someone is good enough to hack 15 wrong solutions in the given time window, I feel that they deserve as many points as one who solves the 2000 point problem.

Personally, extended time for hacking is one thing that I actually like about Codeforces more than Topcoder.
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14 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it
I guess there is fair enough support for the existing format. In which case, it makes perfect sense to continue with it. I guess some of us will have to get used to it. :)
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