Hi,

as usual, when you ask someone in codeforces tips on how to improve with the most amazing feature of this site has (that's constant contests rounds), they are all equal: compete, read all problem statements and then read the editorial to solve the unsolved ones. I follow this step by step, but when I reach the last one I fail completely.

What I mean is, why is so hard to understand most (Most because from the top of my head I can recall really good editorial writers like zscoder and Errichto) of editorials here ? Sometimes is like the contest writers want us to get inside their brain and understand what they mean by some paragraph. I get it, is really difficult to be great in explaining things, maybe the hardest thing in the job of creating a contest.

But sometimes I think it only requires time and effort. Some of the most interesting contest & editorials I've seen had depictions of how the idea of the algorithm works, or lots and lots of tips before giving it out, or even displaying the content needed to be already understood to get this question right (which is one of the most effective, for me =] ). It's really not great to try your best to improve on some contest and fail at the final step, even if you read 20x the same paragraph you wont understand.

I'm glad we are here as a community and everytime I stumble on a difficult explanation, I quickly go to the comment section and find about 3 comments teaching their way of doing it and they are crystal clear! Also 5 comments complaining of how difficult it is to understand what was written, and most of the time the author is there to help out, but if the editorial was written more carefully this wouldn't be necessary at all.

I think what is missing is empathy. Empathy on how the people that did not solve that question is going to read that explanation. Those are your targets. People that don't really understand and maybe don't have the background to get the idea as you, problem setter, do. Focus on how you are going to explain a idea of your algorithm to a person that is not a programmer, try to explain with figures, with tips, use everything in your hands. After doing so, ask some friend of yours, to try understand your text and explain it to you and so on.

Teaching is hard, really hard, but rewarding. I think the community would really improve with great editorials.

Does someone experiencing this too? Let's discuss it. Help our writers to improve too.

To problem setters: get this post as a constructive critique. The job of creating good and interesting contests are really hard alone, but don't forget to put the same effort on the explanations. Cheers!