Requesting Ideas for 2nd October Contest

1 min read

Clam Chawdas,

We’re planning out the activities for October and would like to hold a second contest at the end of the month (in addition to our traditional 10-Day Algorithm Challenge). We’re not really sure what to do so we are asking for your help. Here are some suggestions we came up with:

  • A shorter duration algorithm contest – aka Mini Challenge
  • An ACM-ICPC style competition – This includes choosing a team (up to 3 people), penalties for wrong answers, etc…
  • A game development competition – aka Gamer’s Challenge (maybe using JS only?)
  • A badge development competition – we will publicize our API, you can create badges to show your own rank/problems you’ve solved, ranking in previous competitions, etc…  This will include HTML/CSS/JS.  Judging is subjective and less heavy on actual development.
  • A debugging competition – We give you a few problems with buggy solutions, the first person to correct them all so that they output the correct result (with the fewest amount of changes from the original code?) wins.

We’ve discussed some other ideas including a contest for shortest lines of code, though this promotes bad programming styles (hard to read/understand).  We’d like to do something that encourages quality software development.

Any of the ideas above appeal to you?  Any new ideas we haven’t thought of?  Let us know (and have a nice weekend)…

Cheers,

Amit (Chef)

Special Problems For Coders With No DSA Knowledge? Smells…

Let us start off with a couple of disclaimers – if your rating is above 1600, this will have literally no change for you....
debanjan321
1 min read

Round-Up Of The 2021 Cook-Offs

We’re done with all of 2021’s Cook-Offs, and we’re taking a look back to see what the competitions brought. Instead of the usual 12,...
riddhi_225
2 min read

2021 December LunchTime | Ending The Year In Style!

We’re done with the December LunchTime, which means that all of 2021’s rated-for-all competitions are over. While there’s plenty to reminisce about for the...
riddhi_225
2 min read

40 Replies to “Requesting Ideas for 2nd October Contest”

  1. Hi
    My suggession will be an ACM type conest with team of three. As the ICPC is round the corner, we would be benefitted by this.
    I would also like to thank codechef for the great work. We are highly benefitted by the codechef chapter.
    Thanks

  2. Hi
    My suggession will be an ACM type conest with team of three. As the ICPC is round the corner, we would be benefitted by this.
    I would also like to thank codechef for the great work. We are highly benefitted by the codechef chapter.
    Thanks

  3. (1)An ACM-ICPC style competition

    (2)A debugging competition – We give you a few problems with buggy solutions, the first person to correct them all so that they output the correct result (with the fewest amount of changes from the original code?) wins.

  4. (1)An ACM-ICPC style competition

    (2)A debugging competition – We give you a few problems with buggy solutions, the first person to correct them all so that they output the correct result (with the fewest amount of changes from the original code?) wins.

  5. Another vote for ICPC style contest. But wonder how we will be able to form teams. Other ideas:

    1) Software design contests.
    2) Problems that forces us to use adv. data structures like RB trees.
    3) Mini projects that make us write moderately large amounts of code.

    I feel 3) is important because
    1) You get a better experience when you write a large piece of software.
    2) You have to collaborate with others, hence learn to work in teams, learn to use source control etc.

    Personally, I wonder if I will have so much time that I can compete in regular challenges as well as these!

  6. Another vote for ICPC style contest. But wonder how we will be able to form teams. Other ideas:

    1) Software design contests.
    2) Problems that forces us to use adv. data structures like RB trees.
    3) Mini projects that make us write moderately large amounts of code.

    I feel 3) is important because
    1) You get a better experience when you write a large piece of software.
    2) You have to collaborate with others, hence learn to work in teams, learn to use source control etc.

    Personally, I wonder if I will have so much time that I can compete in regular challenges as well as these!

  7. Some suggestion :

    1. A debugging contest will be gr8 🙂
    2. May be some RIA dev competitions.
    3. A flash + php + mysql competition.
    4. Wud luv another one of the GAMERs challange 😀

    Also long back it was announced that every month 1-2 problems will be dealt in detail here. We saw it going a few times but then it stopped. Plz keep it goin as it helps newbie algorithmists (like me) to get valuable knowledge.

    thanx

  8. Some suggestion :

    1. A debugging contest will be gr8 🙂
    2. May be some RIA dev competitions.
    3. A flash + php + mysql competition.
    4. Wud luv another one of the GAMERs challange 😀

    Also long back it was announced that every month 1-2 problems will be dealt in detail here. We saw it going a few times but then it stopped. Plz keep it goin as it helps newbie algorithmists (like me) to get valuable knowledge.

    thanx

  9. hey…

    I guess you should have some non traditional contest this time …if you are planning something special.

    You can have an overnight code modification contest ( call it an overnight moding contest – ‘m’ for modification

    ) . The idea will be to provide 4-5 piece of code which would compile successfully and have some output (valid).

    The code had to be modified to achieve some other functionality .
    Winning entry can be decided on the factor of change made to the code…. the lesser the better.
    For example.

    following code (solution for Life,universe and everything ..with 8 instead of 42)

    i;main() {i!=8?scanf(“%d”,&i),((i-8)?printf(“%dn”,i):exit(0)),main():exit(0); }

    had to be changed to find 8 factorial..

    i=1,f=1;main() {i!=4?i++,f=f*i,main():printf(“%d”,f),getch(),exit(0); }

    Aim: When we work professinally , we have to deal with lots of legacy code..many a time , you need to understand

    the code and modify it to add a new functionality ..sometimes an addition of functionality , and sometimes a

    total change … may be this can be aimed towards that.

    Looks like a wild idea (even setting questions might be a big challenge…) !!

  10. hey…

    I guess you should have some non traditional contest this time …if you are planning something special.

    You can have an overnight code modification contest ( call it an overnight moding contest – ‘m’ for modification

    ) . The idea will be to provide 4-5 piece of code which would compile successfully and have some output (valid).

    The code had to be modified to achieve some other functionality .
    Winning entry can be decided on the factor of change made to the code…. the lesser the better.
    For example.

    following code (solution for Life,universe and everything ..with 8 instead of 42)

    i;main() {i!=8?scanf(“%d”,&i),((i-8)?printf(“%d\n”,i):exit(0)),main():exit(0); }

    had to be changed to find 8 factorial..

    i=1,f=1;main() {i!=4?i++,f=f*i,main():printf(“%d”,f),getch(),exit(0); }

    Aim: When we work professinally , we have to deal with lots of legacy code..many a time , you need to understand

    the code and modify it to add a new functionality ..sometimes an addition of functionality , and sometimes a

    total change … may be this can be aimed towards that.

    Looks like a wild idea (even setting questions might be a big challenge…) !!

  11. IMHO, ICPC contest is the best one to have. It’s a tried and tested formula. I think only Topcoder is better than this format 😉

    On second thoughts, the problems must be something that can be solved in 5 hours, else the winners might have only 1-2 accepted 🙂

    Also shouldn’t “badge development competition” and “gamers challenge” be under DesignChef (which is under DirectI afaik)?

    I think the Mini-challenge wasn’t so much fun with only 1 problem.

    I think Codechef must really look at other contest formats and then make an informed decision. ( here is a list of well known programming contests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programming_contests )

    I dont think a shortest code contest is a good idea, people knowing languages like Perl, PHP, Python will beat the c**p out of C++ and Java. This in no way implies they are better.

  12. IMHO, ICPC contest is the best one to have. It’s a tried and tested formula. I think only Topcoder is better than this format 😉

    On second thoughts, the problems must be something that can be solved in 5 hours, else the winners might have only 1-2 accepted 🙂

    Also shouldn’t “badge development competition” and “gamers challenge” be under DesignChef (which is under DirectI afaik)?

    I think the Mini-challenge wasn’t so much fun with only 1 problem.

    I think Codechef must really look at other contest formats and then make an informed decision. ( here is a list of well known programming contests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programming_contests )

    I dont think a shortest code contest is a good idea, people knowing languages like Perl, PHP, Python will beat the c**p out of C++ and Java. This in no way implies they are better.

  13. Hi,
    I think an idea presentation/workout event will be good to come up new ideas for developing application on web.
    Ideas should be related to “how to make easier to use web?”
    Few ideas like that:::
    1. Web interface using only html+CSS+javascript. No image, no flash. Keeping in mind total file size should me minimum.

    2. Personal twitter application where a certain limited people can tweet.

    3. webpage analysis and worth calculation based upon backlinks, members, readers, subscribers and all.

    4. Monetization method based upon locality(ip based).

    I hope now you got my point…..

  14. Hi,
    I think an idea presentation/workout event will be good to come up new ideas for developing application on web.
    Ideas should be related to “how to make easier to use web?”
    Few ideas like that:::
    1. Web interface using only html+CSS+javascript. No image, no flash. Keeping in mind total file size should me minimum.

    2. Personal twitter application where a certain limited people can tweet.

    3. webpage analysis and worth calculation based upon backlinks, members, readers, subscribers and all.

    4. Monetization method based upon locality(ip based).

    I hope now you got my point…..

  15. Really liked the idea of something on the lines of a “mini-project” kind of contest where one has to write moderately large amount of code. This can also be clubbed with the idea of teams where one project is to be developed by one team- this way harnessing two-fold benefits.

  16. Really liked the idea of something on the lines of a “mini-project” kind of contest where one has to write moderately large amount of code. This can also be clubbed with the idea of teams where one project is to be developed by one team- this way harnessing two-fold benefits.

Leave a Reply