prabhav_'s blog

An absolute shit-show contest!
By prabhav_, 18 months ago, In English

This is mainly a ranting blog for the ongoing Credit Suisse Global Coding Contest 4.0, which is an absolute shit show right now, feel free to skip it.

Background:

So if you don't know there was a contest organized by Credit Suisse on 6th October 2022. The contest's problem set consisted of 9 copied problems. Many people were able to solve all the problems so they arranged the leaderboard on the basis of the execution time taken by the code. The contest ended on 23rd October 2022 (or did it?)

So here comes the twist.

Shit show an exaggeration?

Issues

  • In a contest where you need to just make your code the fastest, the version of the compiler can make a significant difference. Guess what? There are no details mentioned of the compiler being used for any language:)
  • There were dumb issues like trailing and ending spaces that caused WA for various people for days if you are lucky
  • You can't see the score for each of your individual submissions.
  • But you can see which submission fetched you the highest score (or can you? T&C Apply)

    T&C*: You can only see the code of the highest-scored submission if it's in the last 10 submissions, else good luck

  • Their query help center gave me an API Endpoint to resolve the issue of only being able to see the last 10 submissions that doesn't work after hours of messaging.

    • P.S: They reply only if replying is convenient for them.

  • They are scaling up and down the execution times of different languages and not revealing the scaling factors publically
  • Their judging system was down for hours if not days in between the contest more than a few times.

    • And if this bullshit wasn't enough

    The contest ended on 23rd October 2022 (or did it?)

    The contest ended on the 23rd of October and it displayed the I quote "Finalised Leaderboard" for more than a few hours during which a lot of people discussed their approaches to optimize various solutions as the contest had officially ended.

    Then suddenly without any email to the contestants:

  • They extended it till the 30th of October
  • Revamped the whole scoring system (more than once in the last 12 hours, more than two weeks into the contest).
  • Somehow judged the past 2 days of submissions but didn't concurrently update the leaderboard, and didn't notify the contestants.
    • I'm pretty sure there are many contestants right now who think they are going to receive their prize as per the finalized leaderboard after spending weeks optimizing their code but they are in for a surprise.


    Irrelevant

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    CodeChef New Prize Structure For Cook-Off & LunchTime
    By prabhav_, history, 3 years ago, In English

    For more details: https://blog.codechef.com/2021/07/12/codechef-announces-new-prize-structure-for-cook-off-lunchtime/

    let the meme war begin! The funniest memes win contribution!

    Prabhav Dogra

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    Language Filter
    By prabhav_, history, 3 years ago, In English

    While practicing problems from Codeforces Problem Set. I wish there was a way to filter problems on the basis of submission languages allowed. I find it quite irritating to find Kotlin-only problems popping up in the middle of the problem set (Since I'm only familiar with C++), only to know after submitting that only Kotlin submissions are allowed.

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