codefforces's blog

By codefforces, history, 3 years ago, In English

By default, submissions for a problem are shown in the increasing order of solution size. (Example). Why solution size, of all things?

This becomes annoying when I want to look at some readable submissions for a problem. Look at the the first entry, from the above example. No line breaks whatsoever. The code seems to be specifically tailored to top this list. No offence, it's their choice.

But as a user, I think order by submission time would be more natural and helpful. That would first list the code of the contest toppers. Given their consistency, it becomes a lot easier to find their solution to almost any problem.

At least, is there an option in the settings to change the default behavior, that I might have overlooked?

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3 years ago, # |
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Yeah, I've been looking for solution of this too and I think this is biggest problem for beginners like me. Usually editorials aren't enough for for understanding the idea and it's always better to read multiple codes from other people. Another think that I would appreciate is to sort submissions by rating. Only thing I can suggest is to add to friends people with friendly code and then look at the submissions in friends standings.

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3 years ago, # |
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Not a default, but you can manually sort by submission time, or by judging time, like this.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    Yeah, you have to edit the link manually. Would be nicer if the filtering/sorting options (friends, "status filter", "sort by") were all in one place.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      You don't have to edit the link manually; at the bottom of the page there are options to sort it by submission time, execution time, solution size, etc.

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3 years ago, # |
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I would much prefer solution size to anything else, and you probably should too. Sure, the top 1-3 entries may be hard to read/obfuscated, but many of the near-shortest solutions teach me the nicest implementation tricks to drastically shorten code and how to cleverly write only one thing instead copy pasting and modifying it three times. And lastly, for me, understanding nice short code takes less time than understanding nice long code, as there is obviously less to read.