MikeMirzayanov's blog

Codeforces: Results of 2019
By MikeMirzayanov, 4 years ago, translation, In English

Hi Codeforces!

The platform recently turned 10 years old. We accept your congratulations at https://codeforces.com/10years. Please review the progress in 2019 and support the anniversary crowdfunding campaign. Your donation will be a contribution to the future of Codeforces, will help its development and work. We need resources to continue to host rounds, not to stop developing, to innovate and to maintain the existing infrastructure.

In 2019, together with numerous writers the coordinators worked on problems: KAN, 300iq, cdkrot, arsijo and recently joined isaf27. And this year, rounds coordinated by other experienced members of our community can be expected. Intrigued?

The main innovations in the platform are implemented by me and the developers: kuviman, cannor147 and geranazavr555. Una_Shem provided great organizational assistance. Thanks!

I send special rays of gratitude to problem writers and testers! This year we have had more rounds than ever before!

Time to take stock of 2019.

Partner Events

We are pleased to hold programming competitions with companies or for companies. I'm sure this is a great way to support the community of young programmers and hire talented candidates. Here is a list of our main partners this year:

  • Telegram and personally Pavel Durov is supporting Codeforces activities for many years, every regular round is held with their help, thank you!
  • Mail.Ru — Technocup and Russian AI Cup
  • VK, VK Cup — now a personal multi-track competition for Russian-speaking programmers
  • XTX Markets, Codeforces Global Rounds — a series of 6 rounds with a separate scoring and souvenirs for the best participants
  • Harbour.Space University — a series of educational rounds, the selection of summer school Tech Scouts
  • JetBrains, Kotlin Heroes Rounds — Kotlin programming language contests
  • Huawei — research competition (marathon) with elements of machine learning
  • Forethought, Forethought Future Cup — a two-level competition with the Final at Forethought headquarters (San Francisco) and the mirror contest for worldwide participants
  • Dasha.AI, Dasha Code Championship — a two-level competition with the Final at St. Peterburg and Novosibirsk (and the mirror contest for worldwide participants)
  • VeeRoute — research competition (marathon)
  • Microsoft, Microsoft Q # Coding Contest — unusual quantum computing competition #### Major innovations

Work on improvements in Codeforces and Polygon never stops. Much of the work to improve the infrastructure, stability, performance is not evident. The list below lists the main points for noticeable improvements.

Polygon: https://polygon.codeforces.com — platform to prepare programming problems
  1. Multiple improvements and fixes
  2. Two-factor authentication support,
  3. API enhancements
  4. Partial support for problems with special resources (graders)
  5. Many improvements in issue tracking
  6. Improved typography checking in statements (quotes, etc.)
  7. Contests search
  8. Contest groups basic support
  9. Contest and problem PINs
  10. Scale support for images
Codeforces
  1. New user self-registration in domain groups
  2. MathJax support in posts and comments
  3. Spectator ranklists
  4. Improved IOI mode support
  5. Changes to support multi-site groups (to host Russian Olympiad in Informatics Regional Stage)
  6. The problem proposals subsystem has been improved
  7. "I trust this user" checkbox
  8. Multiple improvements for contest managers
  9. Cowriters support for blog posts
  10. "interactive" problem tag (auto-setup)
  11. Setting in the profile to hide social network widgets
  12. Special notes for programming languages (e.g. recommend PyPy)
  13. Improved diagnostics for C ++ solutions
  14. Uphacking (unofficial hacks after any round)
  15. Improvements of micro (m1, m2, m3) websites
  16. The feature to specify allowed programming languages in mashups
  17. Now mashup managers can skip/ignore/reject solutions manually
  18. Window contest (start contest in a time range, for VK Cup)
  19. Blacklists and other improvements in usertalks
Статистика

The results for this year were very surprising and pleased me at the same time! This year, again, an increase was obtained in all major metrics (from 15% to 45%). Just look at these numbers!


The upper line takes into account users who have verified an email. The lower line takes into account those who have at least one solved problem. A hockey stick is the dream of any startup!




Only those who participated in rating rounds during July-December are counted. Almost plus a third! How do you like that, Elon Musk?




Nearly 20 million submissions judged, +44% from last year!




Blog posts with positive score, having at least +5 votes, having at least +20 votes, having at least +100 votes. The total number of posts is not interesting, because a lot of trash/spam, which immediately disappears and the result much depends on how we protect against bots and inadequate users. Slightly increased compared to last year. Unfortunately, growth lags behind audience growth.




All positive scored comments, having at least +5 votes, having at least +20 votes. Growth is present, more than a year ago. This makes me happy!




India is ahead of the rest! Russia rolled back to 3rd place, losing 2nd place to China. Japan soared from the 15th to the 8th place. Iran lost ground, and South Korea showed a notable increase.




The number of page views, +31% in 2019!




The number of visits (browser sessions), +32% in 2019!




The number of visitors, +15% in 2019!



They were not included in the pictures, but there is a noticeable increase in the number of hosted rounds (+10 more) and the number of new problems (739 → 847, and this is only in the rating rounds). Numbers are given in comparison between 2018 and 2019.

I am pleased and proud of the results of Codeforces for 2019. The entire Codeforces team will try to please you in 2020 too!

— MikeMirzayanov

  • Vote: I like it
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Comments Comments (36)
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4 years ago, # |
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Great. Keep it up!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +23 Vote: I do not like it

Glad to be part of this community.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +21 Vote: I do not like it

Great work for community

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +68 Vote: I do not like it

The gamma symbol has vanished from cf logo :D

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

Why Codeforces is so popular in India?

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +49 Vote: I do not like it

    Judging by the number of users with a rated round in the last 6 months, divided by the population of age 14-29, Codeforces is more popular (in this back-of-the-envelope sense) in Poland, and much more popular in Russia. Still, Codeforces is more popular in India than in lots of other countries.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +12 Vote: I do not like it

    Afaik, its because the easiest way to get a job is by doing cp(for interviews) and most people in india don't care about anything but jobs.

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

      Wow, that’s very cool!

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +25 Vote: I do not like it

      Is it really? I.e. do employers in India care about things like a cyan handle on Codeforces? Or is it only useful if you are Div. 1 (which most people probably will never be)?

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +60 Vote: I do not like it

        It's not about your color in CF, it's about being able to pass coding interviews.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +7 Vote: I do not like it

        Most people don't really see much difference between interview questions and competitive programming problems, as it is all about some fancy smart algorithms and CS stuff, so they believe that it is all the same and CP is actually optimal way of preparation.

        Yet it is also true that doing CP does improve your interview performance as a side effect.

        And some companies seem to be doing online tests as a cheap way of initial screening — they ask you to solve something at HackerEarth or HackerRank, and that stuff may indeed be typical entry level competitive programming (e.g. because re-using existing competitive programming problems is cheap). CP will be a good preparation to an online test that is about doing CP :) This "hiring tests" thing is so common that you can see multiple stackoverflow/quora/cf questions like "how do I perform well in Codeforces tests", because people just call all contests "tests" afterwards.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

        Actually most of the people start doing CP to get employed in companies like Amazon,Google,Microsoft

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

          How does that answer my question?

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it +15 Vote: I do not like it

            Yes it does,you mentioned "do employers in India care about things like a cyan handle on Codeforces?",I am saying that most of the tech giants do consider cp as a relevant skill,not only Indian companies.

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              4 years ago, # ^ |
                Vote: I like it +2 Vote: I do not like it

              Do they consider reading comprehension as a relevant skill?

              My question was not about Indian vs global companies, it was more like "do they consider a cyan handle impressive".

              Anyway if global tech giants consider CP as a relevant skill, that doesn't really answer "why is CP so popular in India", in that case it should also be that popular in the rest of the world.

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                4 years ago, # ^ |
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                I don't think handle weighs in much unless you are a candidate master — from my personal experience. Also, as Errichto said, its usually used for interview prep more than anything. With regards to popularity in India — its almost a default in India to push(parental/family pressure and social pressure) for a engineering job or to become a doctor (medical). Its very odd and borderline frowned upon to actually do something other than the above mentioned. Since becoming a doctor and settling down requires a lot more money and investment of time, engineering(any branch really and from any of the many many colleges- top or bottom tier) is a popular choice. Given the cheap labour costs, lots of companies also come in to offer tons of SE jobs. Obviously more levels to it but bottom line is this has led to a serious boom in the number of engineering colleges, diluting the quality obviously, and also even people from chemical or mechanical or metallurgical engineering also apply for SE profiles. One can correlate the interest in SE jobs to the interview prep and then to CP as the default mode of preparation. Naturally, as the population of India is high, specifically the working population and the student population, the high CP numbers can be expected. Just to get a feel for it, you should check out the number of people who get attempt this exam called IIT JEE every year. Its an exam for a set of institutions called IITs after twelfth grad and the general thought process of most students is that IIT = great pay package (usually lots of software companies come here for placements). Some truth to it but the hype is incredible.

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                4 years ago, # ^ |
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                Regarding your last paragraph: That implication only works under the assumption that the interest in working for "global tech giants" is equally distributed among the nations. As somebody living in Western Europe, I doubt that. I'd say, here, less people want to work for Google & Co. for two reasons:

                1. The relative increase in salary and thus standard of living is significantly smaller in a post-industrialized country than in India. You can achieve a decent quality of life by just working at a small software shop. The extra grind to get a job at is usually not considered worth it given the small economic incentive. India on the other hand still has a large number of people living in poverty. Getting a high salary would not only benefit ones own well-being but also secures the wealth of the family. A problem that usually not occurs in countries with a working welfare state.

                2. Especially in Europe, the American tech companies have a bad reputation, e. g. for infringing data privacy (Google & Facebook) or treating their non-technical worker poorly (Amazon).

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                  4 years ago, # ^ |
                  ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

                  This phenomenon is very specific to India (and maybe Bangladesh). It's not a general "not rich country" thing. Also it's not like aspiring to work in Google etc is THAT uncommon in the west.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        Exactly what Errichto said. Very few would care about the actual rating on Codeforces or any other platform. But I expect this to change slowly as people who did competitive programming themselves become recruiters.

        But doing competitive programming helps to prepare for tests and interviews. Competitive programming isn't the best way to prepare in case of companies like Microsoft and Google, actual interview prep websites might be better. But some companies like CodeNation have their hiring test questions exactly similar to competitive programming questions.

        It's also interesting (at least I find it to be interesting).

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it -9 Vote: I do not like it

      Yeah I agree,most of them start doing CP for a job,but eventually they develop a liking for it.

      Like Harshil Shah said--"If you can solve hard problems on Codechef, you can easily get 1 crore job in Google” was something that got me started.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +104 Vote: I do not like it

They were not included in the pictures, but there is a noticeable increase in the number of hosted rounds (+10 more)

Can you split this statistics into divisions, please?

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -11 Vote: I do not like it

Codeforces is popular in China, too.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +13 Vote: I do not like it

Amazed to see the statistics of 2019 !!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +23 Vote: I do not like it

best wishes for Codeforces ！best wishes for us !

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +17 Vote: I do not like it

Good work

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

great!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

Best wishes Codeforces! Glad to be a part of this wonderful community!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

Glad I came to know about this platform. :)

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

Keep it up!

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4 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

[DELETED]

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +2 Vote: I do not like it

Thanks Mike for this platform. Keep it up.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +24 Vote: I do not like it

Thanks for the interesting stats!

Out of curiosity: what countries are in the lead by YOY growth?

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4 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it

I first tried Codeforces less than a year ago, recommended by edsa, and this has been one of my biggest discoveries of 2019! I hope to be here with all of you for many more years, y'all are amazing! Keep up the good work! <3

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +17 Vote: I do not like it

we like codeforces for so many reasons, but two reasons effected me well.

  1. Different types of solution from great people. Also so many different types of problem. I think this increases our think ability.
  2. Blog system. Last two years we don't get enough resources, but in 2019.. so many interesting blog was made by best programmer. It helps us a lot. They just share their knowledge as much as possible . Thank you brothers <3 .

we want to thank you codeforces and their amazing system.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +2 Vote: I do not like it

Glad to be part of codeforces community.Keep up the good work!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

Great Work!! Best wishes for Codeforces.

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