Codechef's editorial losing it's simplicity

Since past few contests I have been observing that quality of codechef’s editorial is degrading, previously the editorials were used to be very nice the were used to be so detailed and well explained that even a beginners can understand them in a single glance whereas now I found some editorials very complicated and are not so detailed so expert programmers might be getting it but it becomes really hard for newbies to understand those editorials. It’s editorials are the reason why I like codechef over other competitive coding platforms.

I think @admin and codechef team should take care about its editorials.

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It kind of depends on the problem also dear.

How simple the writer makes the editorial is influenced by three things,

  1. His expectations from the people solving the problem. It might be possible that he is expecting that the attempter knows at least so and so concept thoroughly, and may not expect him to be a complete beginner. So he simply states or skims through that part because he is not expecting that a complete beginner would even attempt it.

Eg- DP needs you to know basics of recursion, and editorialist may think that since you are attempting a dp problem, you kknow basic recursion and hence may skip explaining it.

2 . How simple the editorial is, also depends on you. If you see some foreign concept, I would suggest you to practice it and enquire about it. Not every editorialist “spoon-feeds”. Some purposefully leave it your responsibility to go and learn things which you don’t know. And it kind of works in a way too. If everything is spoonfed to us, then we wont make any effort to learn something new, we will just crib and cling of editorialists to explain it.

3 . Some problems are way too complex, that its almost impossible to explain it to a complete beginner. Perhaps it would take a huge chunk to text to explain each and everything, and hence for convenience they choose to skip the basic explanation

That being said, your views are always welcome. Yes, it has been my experience too that the every editorial here is not in ‘spoon-feeding’ category. But I will say, make the best out of it. The editorials sometimes prompt discussions, making coders exchange their views and solutions and often we are able to see alternative approaches, which are a good learning experience (and this wont happen if editorials spoon-feed, cause then there no scope of discussing it). Also, you can also request somebody here to explain things clearly to you, which again is really healthy discussion.

Also, I personally suggest that try sending mails to codechef regarding such issues, aside from creating threads. Since it will prompt them to act faster. Things may go unnoticed at the forum, for any reason, but will not go unnoticed at mail .So yeah, mail them this issue too!

To sum it up, I will say that look at positive side of things for now, and try mailing codechef to see what can be done about it. That’s all from my side :slight_smile:

EDIT- Yes, prakhar raised a very genuine issue. The editorials for December long are not published till date, and I think taking over two months after contest in publishing editorials will (and has) killed the enthusiasm in many. @admin, please look into it that editorial for Feb and Dec long get posted soon, (many of us have even mailed this issue…)

EDIT 2 - (related to comments in OP)

arpit, wait a minute. What do you mean by tedious?

@pkacprzak- I checked your editorial for flymode, and I personally feel its fine. Just one thing that you used ‘h’ to denote height between ‘hi and hi+1’, that thing initially got me cause I was thinking h is a height entered in the list. Its in the end when you told about floating points (that was quite nice tbh) that I realized what h really was. Just use different notations and take care of commas (#My_Writer_Blood). Honestly, I appreciate that you are so open to criticism and take it so positively! I will just suggest that if you guys want feedback, ask for feedback on editorials in that lunchtime thread you created. So that you can have all relevant data in one place. What I also want to imply with this, is that, take feedback from multiple people because its impossible to satisfy everybody. With multiple feedbacks, you can see which fraction of population is dissatisfied and which feels the editorials are good (this will let you deliver editorials better). Also, multiple feedbacks means less randomness. That’s all I have to say

(And honestly, I feel you guys did a superb job with Feb Lunchtime. The Q were literally…mind blowing to say the least. I liked that House paint one(I think it was first Q of that kind I ever came across) [and it was too tough for me :p]. Editorials also came shortly and you people are taking feedbacks nicely…well I couldn’t ask for more! I appreciate this :slight_smile: )

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Also, the editorials for long contest don’t come on time or they don’t come at all.

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Editorials are the thing that keeps me to codechef. But these days, editorial are messing up. No doubt that editorials for short contests are quick, but don’t know what happen to long challenge. They don’t arrive on time. And sometimes they don’t even arrive.

P.S. I’m not blaming anyone. I am sharing my feedback :slight_smile:

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Your feedback has been noted. We will work on improving the factors that you told.

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That would be really nice of you guys :slight_smile:

@dpraveen
You write very nice editorials I have came across your editorials several times. I would like to thank you for that.

Can share some insight on how have you become very good programmer. Also I have messaged you on LinkedIn regarding this.

Is your opinion related to my editorials also?

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@pkacprzak

I was saying it in general but too be very frank there have been instances when I found your editorial also tedious, even at that time I thought of raising the issue but I thought may be I am missing out something so I didn’t. Please don’t take it personally I just felt bad about so thought it should be taken care of.

@arpit728 Thanks, I’m just asking to know if I can improve on something in the future :slight_smile:

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@pkacprzak

can you try your hands on this problem.

https://discuss.codechef.com/questions/92066/help-needed-for-solving-string-and-sub-sequences-problem

agree, long contest editorials should be available on time

@arpit728 Sure, take a look now

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