crazyilian's blog

By crazyilian, 4 years ago, translation, In English
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By crazyilian, 4 years ago, In English

Rating

Codeforces has ranks "candidate master", "master", "grandmaster", "international grandmaster" and "legendary grandmaster". I propose renaming these titles for the following reasons:

  1. They are insultive to differently-abled people who can't reach high results and thus can't "master" competitive programming.
  2. "master" sounds like a reference to master/slave terminology, it needlessly references awful history. I believe it's inappropriate for such a great platform as Codeforces.

I think the following titles should be used instead:

  1. "candidate master" -> "candidate professional"
  2. "master" -> "professional"
  3. "grandmaster" -> "genius"
  4. "international grandmaster" -> "international genius"
  5. "legendary grandmaster" -> "legendary genius"

Additionally, I believe "genius" is more descriptive than "master" or "grandmaster".

I want to note that a similar change was adopted by many projects:

  1. Python — Avoid master/slave terminology
  2. Android — Changing whitelist/blacklist to allowlist/blocklist
  3. Go — Replace usages of whitelist/blacklist and master/slave
  4. ZFS — Remove unnecessary references to slavery
  5. PHPUnit — Initial work on removing the blacklist/whitelist terminology
  6. GitLab — Rename master branch to main branch in the GitLab project

Theme

Codeforces doesn't have any sort of dark theme. Even the special extensions (like a Dark Reader) don't really work with it — it leaves the logo background white. It looks like white is always better than black no matter what.

I hope you'll add dark theme as soon as possible and make it the default one.

just to point out: this is a sarcastic post, except for yet another request for a dark theme

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By crazyilian, history, 4 years ago, In English

After the last round (Codeforces Round 645 (Div. 2)), the trouble with problems' statements became quite obvious: many people liked the problem themselves, but legends do not. Some people even started talking about incorrect use of coronavirus theme in the statements, you can read this post.

It's quite a shame that the announcement and editoral get downvotes because of the legends, because making the legend is the most minor part of the problems, much more effort is spent on generating tests, inventing the problem itself, checking the solutions, writing tutorials, etc..

There are people who want to read only formal statements, and there are those who like to read legends. Unfortunately, the first ones are much more numerous, and some of them rate rounds not by problems, but by negative emotions caused during the contest, and in this case the legend.

It is often difficult to write a formal statements in a place with a legend, the participant is not obvious where to read what is important and what is not. But I think it's wrong to remove creativity on such an excellent platform as Codeforces. That's why I'd like to suggest this: the possibility to write a separate statements with a legend, a separate formal statements. That is, separate "tabs" in the problem with only formal statements, and the statements of which are now the majority on Codeforces.

This does not mean that the authors will have to invent a legend, the main thing is to write a formal statements for the participants. In this case, the legend's tab just contains a formal statements.

With this innovation, it will be better for everyone — the participants read the statements they want, and the authors are happy that the round is not free of creativity and the round is evaluated by the problems themselves.

I understand that this is likely to be difficult to implement, especially from the point of view of Polygon, but this update will be better for everyone. What do you think about it?

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By crazyilian, 4 years ago, translation, In English

This is our first contest for the three of us (Alexdat2000, crazyilian, sevlll777), so we would like to share our impressions of creating this contest. Check it if you want to!

ROUND LOG

And, of course, here's the tutorial of the round.

1358A - Park Lighting
Idea: Alexdat2000

Picture
Tutorial
Solution

1358B - Maria Breaks the Self-isolation
Idea: crazyilian

Picture
Tutorial
Solution

1358C - Celex Update
Idea: crazyilian

Picture
Tutorial
Solution

1358D - The Best Vacation
Idea: sevlll777

Picture
Tutorial
Solution

1358E - Are You Fired?
Idea: sevlll777 и crazyilian

Picture
Tutorial
Solution

1358F - Tasty Cookie
Idea: sevlll777 и crazyilian

Picture
Tutorial
Solution by Alexdat2000
Solution by Alivk06 (much shorter)

Thank you, everyone, for participating in the round! We hope you've raised your rating! And if you haven't, don't be sad, you'll do it!

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