XYZForces

Revision en1, by ChaosAngel, 2020-01-30 20:23:03

I've noticed that after many contests, we get comments accusing the contest of being anything from "mathforces" to "DDOSforces". Some people use these tags to criticize contests that are skewed in one direction or the other.

But is the fact that different contests tend to focus excessively on different areas really a bad thing?

Personally, I think that this is due to the diversity we have in the writing teams and problem creation process. This is something I think we should appreciate! While there definitely is such a thing as a poorly designed, imbalanced contest, I do think that having different contests biased towards different topics to be a good thing. In the long run, since we have so many dedicated, hard-working writers pumping out problems, contests cover a balanced range of skills. Some may be proof heavy, others have more implementation, yet others are about edge cases. While some of us may not like a particular type of these problems/contests (I hate typeforces personally and always get -90 rating on them :p ), in the long run, they are all necessary skills for competitive programmers, and I am happy that I am exposed to various, non-uniform contests that make me harness a skill or the other. The element of surprise is also very welcome; different writer styles ensure different contest styles, and there is nothing more fun than putting old skills to test in new situations.

So, I wrote this blog to honor the different flavors of codeforces. I'm going to mention a few of them (in no particular order, the colors are just for fun)that I've seen being thrown around on problem comment sections, and I invite whoever has additional ones to add them in the comments section.

Mathforces

Stringforces

Speedforces

TypeForces

Proofforces

Bruteforces

Hackforces

In the comments section, I invite you all to share your favorite examples of a particular type of contest!

Honorable mention to the dreaded Queueforces and DDOSforces, may they be few and far in between :)

Tags typeforces, stringforces, mathforces, hackforces

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en1 English ChaosAngel 2020-01-30 20:23:03 2263 Initial revision (published)