Hello,
I will provide my opinion on this matter as well, and will start by asking, why was this idea suggested in the first place?
The format 10 days - 10 problems, is in my opinion more than well suited to the philosophy of the Long Contest format, that is to provide some easy and medium problems that can be solved by anyone who puts some effort in reading editorials, contest after contest and looking at the setter and tester solutions once the contest is finished.
The main advantage of this is that even people who are not very skilled at programming can begin to gradually see results as they will improve a lot by doing this and it will keep them motivated to keep studying and learning with the best.
Once this is done, they might be able to start working on some of the medium difficulty problems and, at last move to the hard and challenge problem.
I would also like to point out that for someone who is not very experienced with algorithms, even grasping the ideas described in the editorials can take up to several days if not weeks. It’s not in one day or with one implementation that someone who didn’t know about Fast Fourier Transforms will become good at implementing solutions that use them, for example.
It’s a very hard learning process that takes a lot of time! (Which is something I personally don’t have :(…)
So, up to a point, my idea would be to promote some sort of discussion panel, where, say, up to 2 days after editorials are out, the setter of each problem remains available to answer any queries regarding ONLY his/her own problem to anyone who might have them. I believe this, if done on a focused way, would benefit many people!!
Now, regarding the Challenge problem, I don’t believe that having some extra days solely for it would help anyone but ACRush and several other top solvers… Some solutions for these problems are way over 500/600 lines which makes them literally impossible for a beginner to read and understand…
We should remember that some top solvers can solve 8/9 problems in one day or two, while other people struggle to get AC for only one problem… And to benefit beginners I think that we should stay with 10 day format, as the only way to learn is by struggling and working very much.
Hence, I think that by extending contest duration, it would serve mainly to keep the fight between ACRush and someone else active on the challenge problem… And ACRush always wins… Which I don’t believe that it’s something that beginners are very much interested in, because it wouldn’t be with 3 extra days that they would solve Challenge problem… That three days would be better spent analyzing editorials for easy problems… IMHO.
Best regards,
Bruno