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at.f's blog

By at.f, 4 years ago, In English

In Codeforces Global Round 9, conqueror_of_tourist became the first Python user (to my knowledge) to become Grandmaster, with a rating of 2468!

Considering how much Python is derided by most of the people in the CP community, some people thought this was impossible. conqueror_of_tourist has truly mastered writing cancer code in Python. Feel free to PM him for all of your Python needs :^)

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

But what about PHP grandmasters?

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4 years ago, # |
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Cancer code in Python?

Please compare problem G in terms of length and beauty of tourist and conqueror_of_tourist

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +22 Vote: I do not like it

    I copied and pasted from https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/76507 so the cancer thing is probably some in-joke between Chilli and pajenegod. It is completely out of context now that the names are different (and I am just some rando with no relations to them, apologies to all!).

    To me, knowing how to write cancerous python is high praise. Python is beautiful up until you need it to run fast. Even in the simple DFS example you linked, there were two python specific problems: input() being slow which TLE'd his first submission and recursion being nonviable which forced him to write the iterative DFS in the first place. There were easy fixes in this case (he didn't even need the uglier fast io here) but as you get into the harder problems with tighter time limits, you either have to give up and switch language, or learn crazier unpythonic micro-optimizations to make the python pass anyway.

    In that sense, conqueror_of_tourist hasn't earned this praise yet. The last round wasn't implementation heavy and from his submission history, whenever it is, he tends to rewrite in C++ instead.

    So pajenegod will forever be the true god of cancer code in python to me. Recently he helped me with 1316E - Team Building which has an intended solution of O(10^5 * 7 * 2^7) (roughly 90 million) which I thought is impossible for python. But he was like nope, if you just use python floats instead of ints, it would be faster. A fact so esoteric it is true almost nowhere else except for pypy running on 32 bit!

    Anyway if you are masochistic and want to keep using python please check out https://github.com/cheran-senthil/PyRival and the AC discord.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Woah, this is way deeper than I thought, cheers!

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it

    Tourist has actually used some OOP style code which is verbose by nature. So, actually, you are comparing apples and bananas in terms of length and beauty.

    There are actually almost as short submissions as the ones in python if you exclude boilerplate. for example, 85986193

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4 years ago, # |
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Is it python 2 only or including python 3 as well?

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4 years ago, # |
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This guy is dominating python somehow. Last time I saw python i ran quick as frick (demonetization intensifies).

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it

To be honest, last contest did not require any of that 'cancer code'. I bet most of the grandmasters could submit their solutions in Python with their basic knowledge. This does not undermine the achievement though, well done!

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4 years ago, # |
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pajenegod is just 15 points away from being grandmaster another python legend

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4 years ago, # |
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Hold it for a sec! I went through the submissions of his/her past contests and found out that he/she was forced to use C++ on a problem where PyPy3 TLEd.

https://codeforces.com/submissions/conqueror_of_tourist/contest/1361

Nevertheless, it's a really great achievement! :)