Why does codechef have such a bad explanation technique? They have excellent resources when it comes to introduction to programming for school students but when it comes to editorial they severely lack quality. This is where they fall behind GeekForGeeks. I have solved a few questions during the long challenge but reading editorial for the same question takes too much effort and even though the method used is same as mine, I can not understand it at the first go. I request codechef to increase the simplicity in the editorial and come up with teaching techniques similiar to GeekForGeeks, Khan Academy or TedEd.
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Correct I agree too⌠The editorial are so lengthy and not interesting at all⌠Sometime there is no need for such very big editorial but idk why they wrote .
Codeforces editorial are good as compared to codechef but gfg is best.
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+1e18âŚ
If I had lots of time at my disposalâŚI would make the best kind of editorialsâŚsuch that even a person who is kind of beginner can understand most of the stuff 
I plan to do this in future. People have often said me that I explain in a very easy and simple manner .
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Yes, sometimes when the editorial is too long it gets boring.
In future long contests, Iâll ask editorialist to write a quick explanation section - a concise description that gives a general overview of the key points to solve the problem.
I also like when editorials gives successive hints, each of them getting closer to the solution.
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do u even understand what u are talking abt
codechef editorials are the only place where
the thought process to reach the answer is explained
only here the proofs are explained
just seee codeforces ediitorials
they are just 4 lines and mostly good coders can can grasp it
u can see the chef vijjuâs corner
for editorials written by him which adds similar problems
or problem with different constraaints
which is superb and encourages collective learning
editorialists like vijju ,taran etc
put so much effort to write and how can u say its of low quality
if u donât have the patience to read 2 pages what abt those who wrote 2 pages
as far as i think if i understand the question and have the prerequities then vijju bhai will make me understand the solution with his editorial always
u never know the value of mother until u go to hostel
u can never appreciate codechef editorials until u go to a place
with 3 lines editorial which has a formula and u donât even understand how it was derived
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Effort does not determine quality. The degree to which the reader understands it, determines the quality.
No one is asking for 4 lines of editorials, theyâre asking for simplicity. Length has nothing to do with it. A simple explanation could be shorter or longer depending on the problem.
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Disagree with the statement as well as the attitude of this thread.
If you have a problem with any part of the editorial, you should ask more questions. First to yourself, then directed to the community/editorialist.
Further, expressions like âsuch a bad explanation techniqueâ, âseverely lack qualityâ are subjective.
I have solved a few questions during the long challenge but reading editorial for the same question takes too much effort and even though the method used is same as mine, I can not understand it at the first go.
I think this thread is prompted by âFibeasy Editorialâ by Anand Jaisingh. Even I had some initial difficulty with the editorial. But that was because I was able to figure out that answer is 2^x < N but wasnât able to think/prove in terms of âMSBâ. Instead of criticizing the editorial, perhaps you should try to get into the head of the editorialist and try to figure out how the editorialist is thinking.
All said, sometimes one does find it hard to understand certain editorials - but I think questions are the way to goâŚ
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i agree with @aryanc403 as if the editorial just contain like 2+3 = 5 everyone remains as noob like 3-4 star rather than explanation âWHYâ . High rated coders want the proof of the algorithm and editorialist were doing hardwork to do that , you cant just simply say low quality like you can do their job .try to write editorials for your solved problems with proof then you will get to know how hard it is . even we (you and me ) are not of that level undestanding the editorial to the fullest it means we need more knowledge on math and we should improve instead shitposting. i like to improve myself on the subject rather shitposting like this which i cant understand . you dont even have experience in writing editorials to say that they were of low quality . and gfg is like our education system just like memorisation nothing more than that . just take a look at CLRS seems you would say that is also low quality .
ps: but i think for every beginner these kinda editorials are hard and cant even get a thing quick explanation is also needed to be put in editorial .
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No , but Aryan tell me one thing most of people face this thing , I agree with u of point spoon feeding but there is no meaning of editorial ( very long without taking an example in explaination) if majority of people will not understand , and for gfg I would say that most of the easy to medium question of most of website (codechef codeforces etc.) Are present on gfg with good explanation.
I tried many times and didnât get the solution in that manner, but ya sometimes other people comment below editorial and explain with example , and it really help me.
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Ashok tell me is there is any meaning of PhD or something more if u didnât understand what the teacher want to saysâŚif we understand what teacher wanna say then there is no matter how qualified it is âŚ( In this case how many star he/she have) ,âŚno I didnât say they are very bad or anything else but they should explain there approach / solution with an example , it will be more helpful.
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Interesting debate. Let me see what I can add.
but reading editorial for the same question takes too much effort
I do not follow. You want to solve all hard problems. You also do not want it to have any effort in reading and grasping editorial. What are YOU doing to improve YOURSELF then? Giving the editorial the divine grace of reading it?
Nobody said editorials will make all problems a cakewalk. I can understand if one says that âsome weird jagrons, naming, conventions are used in editorialâ but if you cannot even understand something formal explained mathematically - then please know that you NEED to improve that part.
Stating things mathematically is the most widely accepted method of stating things precisely. If you are trying to escape that, you will never be able to cross a particular rating threshold even years of CP.
The editorial are so lengthy and not interesting at all⌠Sometime there is no need for such very big editorial but idk why they wrote .
Because there are people who did NOT understand the solution that quickly. The editorial is read by audience of varying ratings, and the aim is that they grasp the solution. Have you ever read @kevinsogo 's editorials? They are a damnnn masterpiece!
Just because you got the solution quick does not mean that you get to complain that editorial should be shorter. If the editorial is explaining something, I will never prefer having it cut down just so that someone does not feel its too long.
Of course, you dont put in all details like 1+1=2 either. That type of length should ideally be kept in hidden boxes so its optional. But I will not allow deleting/shortening even that length.
@anon55659401
such that even a person who is kind of beginner can understand most of the stuff
And if you do this for Medium+ problems, you will get a lengthy editorial which is being complained about. So you kind of contradicted yourself by agreeing with OP that editorials must not be long, and yourself following the approach which makes editorials lengthy.
Tip for you : Stop visiting this site for competitive programming purposes.
+1 
. Their Geometric algorithm collection is horrible - their implementation/idea misses almost every corner case possible. For instance - I was once referring to their code of point inside polygon for writing an editorial and wasted 3 days over their wrong implementation.
@alei
Yes, sometimes when the editorial is too long it gets boring.
I disagree. Editorial can get boring only under 2 cases-
- Either you already solved the problem and editorialâs method matches with your own. In this case editorial is not imparting lot of new ideas and stuff to you - but I argue that editorials are made keeping those people in mind who failed to solve the problem, rather than those who solved the problem. The main motivation of people who solved the problem to read the editorial is to look at alternate approaches, which can be kept later in some bonus section. High rated coders, whose solution matches with that of editorial are not as important part of audience as those who failed to solve the problem - so Iâd prefer a lengthy editorial with proper divisions in this case.
- If you did not solve the problem and are getting bored then its due to the explanation not making sense to you - rather than length. No one feels that âOmg there are 2k words more to read. I am getting boredâ , rather, they read a bunch of paragraphs, arent able to make head or tail out of it and get frustrated and âboredâ. In this case the chief culprit is quality and simplicity of explanation, rather than length of editorial.
I also like when editorials gives successive hints, each of them getting closer to the solution.
Yes, that is very ideal. But even that can be âBoringâ to peeps who figured out the entire solution. So I think you get my point when I say that high rated coders are not the most important part of audience to consider when writing editorial.
For high rated coders, usually quick explanation suffices, and that section actually solves all this problem of editorial being unable to serve to audience of varying ratings effectively.
In future long contests, Iâll ask editorialist to write a quick explanation section - a concise description that gives a general overview of the key points to solve the problem.
Yes, please do!
if u donât have the patience to read 2 pages what abt those who wrote 2 pages
+1
@rude009 -
Effort does not determine quality. The degree to which the reader understands it, determines the quality.
This is actually doubly interpretable. I think you meant it in sense that âHow easy the editorial is for people to grasp determines the qualityâ to which I agree.
If the interpretation is that âReaders being able to understand the editorialâ then that is a flawed metric, as now your âqualityâ depends on the audience and a good editorial at, say in month of August, may not be a good editorial in âOctoberâ because the audience now changed and they no longer find it good enough. In this case, the flaw is in audience not the editorial.
there is no meaning of editorial ( very long without taking an example in explaination) if majority of people will not understand
That is a valid point that explanations are made easier with examples. But examples also contribute to length and AFAIK you are against long editorials
You just cant take examples everywhere - its not that simple. Also, I feel if you want an example, you should comment at editorial. I try to provide examples after explanation in bonus section, or when requested in comments. In middle of explanation is not possible everytime.
Not to mention, some editorialists fall for âProof by exampleâ where instead of giving some sort of formal/inform proof or intuition, they just give 1-3 examples and say the observation is proved.
for gfg I would say that most of the easy to medium question of most of website (codechef codeforces etc.) Are present on gfg with good explanation.
Try cp algorithms. If you feel GFG is the upper limit, that site is going to change that.
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All the points which u said are absolutely correct and I agree too ( now) but sometimes ( most of the times ) when the editorial are like fully mathematical just range i to j and all mathematical itâs frustrating but if we take an example side by side to explain our algorithm it would be more more better for coders like meâŚ
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i am studying from CP-algorithms but their question bank is a bit outdated i must say!
I am doing tag searching on codeforces and searching problems of the topic on Hackerrank and Hackerearth!
My input to the debate is as a person who is new to Competitive programming it takes me a lot of time to understand most editorials but the satisfaction i receive from arriving to the solution on reading the editorial and then implementing is immense i must say!
Even if the editorial gets long or âboringâ I donât find any issue because we are able to think with the mind of the problem setter!
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Well, too many mathematical symbols do sometimes make a relatively easy problem seem harder. But⌠Letâs take an example:
Problem: Given a matrix of size n*m, find the sum of all elements in a matrix.
Mathematical editorial
The answer is simply \sum_{i=0}^{n-1} \sum_{j=0}^{m-1} a_{i,j} .
Complexity : O(n*m)
Non-mathematical editorial
To find the solution of the problem, we loop for every row and for each cell in the row, we add its value to our final answer. Since there are n rows in the matrix, and m elements in each row, the complexity of the solution is O(n*m). Here is the code snippet for the solution.
for(int i = 0; i < n; i++){
for(int j = 0; j < m; j++){
ans += a[i][j];
}
}
Well, the differences are pretty obvious. Also, a major part of the argument is unnecessarily long editorials. Hence, if a few mathematical symbols makes an editorial compact and clean, I guess using mathematical symbols improves the editorial quality by a huge margin.
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Yes, that point is fair. Fully mathematical editorials are hard to understand, but I bet there are even short editorials like that which are fully mathematical and perhaps difficult to understand. Since you agree that this part does not depend on length I think the point is made 
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oh,thanks buddy , u r awesome in reply 
, please if it is possible then take a short example side by side it will definately more helpful
Itâs not the patience I have a problem with. The problem is with the editorial taking too much effort as it is not much interesting. I personally believe an explanation is of a good teaching quality if it has :
- hook in problem statement (something that makes me interested in the problem, like the story in problem statements)
- a simple solution : taking small number examples to explain the thinking process that was gone through to come up with the solution, a gradual increase to bigger values and later a mathematical solid proof
- drawings representing the solution to aid visual learners.
GFG,TedEd or for that matter âcodechef material for introduction to programming for school studentsâ has a somewhat same or similiar format for explanation and I feel they are better in quality when compared to editorials for codechef contests. However this has nothing to do with the quality of the solution, it is regarding the âquality of teaching the solutionâ. I believe readers understanding the editorial is the main objective, not the effort the editorialist puts in making the editorial. The effort is appreciated but itâs not the main objective.
I donât think GFG makes you memorize anything. As far as concerned with solutions Iâve seen, Iâve just seen logical explanations. Maybe youâve come across a problem statement on GFG Iâve not come across.
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Editorials donât have to cater to you. It caters to people who already read the statement itself and put some effort into coming up with a solution.
Hook in the problem statement? Why should they, the guy that spent the last 2 hours thinking about it is already hooked enough.
Simple solution for small samples then gradually increase? That guy already came up with the naive brute force solution and a way to optimize it down, albeit not enough. He have already done those steps, the last one is just the giant increase to the full subtask.
Drawings? Why donât you draw it out yourself if you have such a hard time comprehensing the solution. The guy who put some time into thinking already drew out samples to find possible patterns, so he instantly have a visual to look to.
Editorials right now are actually too godamn long and dragged out. Proof sections should be left to the reader so at least they have to put in some effort at least, or linked to sources instead of being explained in baby - steps. The one who came close would have already known most of the proofs.
An example is the digit dp of August Challenge. It already said digit DP in the editorial itself, and in the comments? A bunch of comments asking âhow to practice dp digitâ, âwhat is digit dpâ? Oh wow, you canât even bother to google search? I feel sorry for the editorialist who have to answer those idiotic questions coming from people who wants to be spoonfeeded their way through.
Overall, the editorials should just be shortened to the quick - explanation section. At least now some damn effort will have to be put in to understand, and if you get bored, thatâs your fault. You wonât if you actually spent some time solving the problem and found it interesting.
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if u think gfg is better go thereâŚ
90% of gfg editorials are likeâŚ
approach :
if this do this
else do that
but nobody cares abt why or how
recently i used code from gfg for some cf contest
and it failed on system tests:
i have solved so many problems in gfg and telling u that
codechef editorials are best
may be for 1 2 contests they are not good
but the editorials by vijju ,taran ,likecs and kevinsogo teach alot âŚa lot more than learning from anywhere else
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Not heard of GeekforGeeks website. Also I donât think GeekforGeeks has every tutorial an excellent one. Every site has itâs strength and weaknesses.