ByteCode 2013: Not worth doing.

Hi everybody,

I have been doing the contest ( Contest Page | CodeChef ) and
I am disappointed to say that I have never seen a poorer contest in the history of my programming contests experience.
Having said that, I would now list the reasons for such thoughts on my part.

  1. Organizing a 10 days long contest and deciding ranks on the basis of penalty is completely illogical. Codechef long challenge has a partial points problems which decides the rankings, not the penalty. Long contests concept is itself to let the people take time and move towards the solutions slowly. Rankings on the basis of penalty in a long contest is illogicality at it’s worst.

  2. This point will talk about constraints in some problems. Most of the problems had weak test cases. Constraints weren’t exploited at all. Some problems had stated the constraints completely off track. This is just against the spirit of competitive programming contests: procedural justice. I would not like to state here the problems name here.

  3. The problems weren’t also of the required difficulty. One doesn’t simply have such easier problems for a 10 day long contest. If these guys were trying to emulate Codechef Long, they have completely lost the plot here. If such is not the case, they should have a look at the format of the Codechef Long Challenge.

Here are some suggestions from my side to the organisers:

  1. If you are going for the 10 days contest, try having a partial points problem that will decide the rankings. If you people don’t have the required skills for writing such problems, try having a 3hrs/5hrs/24hrs contest.

  2. Trying having some difficult problems, so that everyone’s tastes are satisfied.

  3. Always exploit the constraints to the worst. Specify the constraints correctly. Try to find the wrong and inefficient solutions and check if your test cases can catch those wrong programs or not.

  4. If you people don’t have the required skill for the above mentioned points, try hiring a problem setter and tester for the whole event. There are many enthusiasts who could do it.

I always expected something better than this from IIT GUWAHATI computer science department. This has been a complete betrayal and disappointment to all the participants.

Anyways, expecting a better organisation and better contest next year.

Any views and suggestions are welcome.

EDIT: Also the problems have been copied from internet. And the input files are also generated badly (not according to given format.)

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My biggest disappointment with this contest is that 2 problems: FREEMAP and MGSTIK have some error in the input files.This problem mainly affects python users as python takes input as strings and then converts them to ints. i wrote a python file just to take input and print it again as output but it is giving NZEC instead of WA. i have written to the organizers via email and also in the comments but there is no reply from their side.It is really frustrating spending 2 days on a problem only to realize that there is error in input .You can see 2 pages full of NZEC for these problems FREEMAP and MAGSTIK. this really demotivates you from attempting further problems.

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Totally agree with @darkshadows. I find many questions in the contest where constraints aren’t exploited and in some they are much more than way of track and even brute force approach can pass the time limit. Poorest contest to participate. And I guess problem setters just copy paste the questions and constraints from around the web. And also long contest cannot be judge on the basis of submission time.

And hope from the next time onwards the problem setters can take care of these things.

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i am IIT Guwahati CSE student and though I am not from organizers side i deeply apologize for the inconvenience u people might be facing.I know questions like DiffBmb,Mgsticks should be more explained .I too tried to contact the organizers from my side but they did not pay any heed.Let bygones be bygones, I will make sure these Errors do not occur next year and the rules make a lot more sense than they do presently.

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Codechef is spoiling there reputation by organizing a contest like this. I have participated in some online events of techniche (IITG technical fest) in last 2 years, i have always been disappointed with them. They don’t know how to organize events, there will be no proper response from there side for any query, they are copy cats (take the problems from net or other contests). Sincere request from my side, if u can’t organize the event properly don’t organize them.

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To add, the timing constraint on many problems are ridiculously weak! After trying to come up with an optimal solution for 0.1s, I submitted a 10 times worse solution, and I still got AC under 1 sec!

When will they declare the results…?

@kj1a7313…see this link…LINK!!!

While setting time limits of questions , all programming languages like java should also be considered …

@kj1a7313 @admin… “CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone”. the ranking given is individual member ranking and it also includes all those members who even didn’t register on BYTECODE.
But, BYTECODE was a team competition and here we have to register our team of at max 3 members . So, ranking system should be based on team performance.
So, where can one find the team rankings. Is there any certificate or prize for top teams??

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Also, comments about weak test cases are promptly removed from the problem pages.

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Now it’s getting me angrier i wasted my half of the day in solving a problem. Search, whole internet to find the approach or anything, learn few thing none the less. And, then i tried the lamest logic and it got accepted. Seriously, why they put these constraints. I must say this contest is completely bogus.

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10 times only. I have submited at least 10^6 worst solution for a problem according to the constraints. It still got passed in 0.0 sec

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In one solution for a particular problem (will specify link after the contest), I hard coded just three values, and used them to get an AC solution. The constraints are WAY TOO bigger!!!

ROTF LOL

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That’s what i’m saying constraints in many problems don’t even make sense but even you just solve the problem for n=1000. The solution got accepted in 0.0 sec.

What i said is even way lesser :stuck_out_tongue:

@tijoforyou: lolz!

@tijoforyou: what you are saying is for one particular problem! I’m saying for most of them.

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srsly dude…not a contest worth solving…bad cases…n^2 algo passing in 0.00 having constraints 10^6…copied ques…is it srsly a contest hosted by an IIT…!!!

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The worst part is that organizers are busy saving/hiding faces instead of coming out and apologizing for their mistakes or rectifying their mistakes! They don’t respond to any query and whats worse is that they ignore all the suggestions.

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