Mike_Mirzayanov_Is_Pussy's blog

By Mike_Mirzayanov_Is_Pussy, history, 4 years ago, In English

I might be downvoted here heavily but i want to say , codechef which from past several years is unable to make well balanced problem set .It's server crashes every second contest and always had an issue with ICPC online in previous years ,.

Should codechef hold ICPC for next year or in future ? I think that the responsibility should be given to codeforces or atcoder .

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +74 Vote: I do not like it

Codechef hosts ICPC in India? It's like swapping your military with Call of Duty players

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4 years ago, # |
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I don't much about ICPC but i would agree about atcoder , atcoder is one of the best site out there Surprisingly with less global audience (mostly japanese peeps), The Problem quality , Test Case ,UI everything is just perfect in the case of atcoder. I may get downvoted but for me atcoder >> codechef

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I agree with ur atcoder >> codechef, but then we can't ignore codeforces :P. And from my personal experience codeforces>atcoder>codechef.

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4 years ago, # |
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Why is CodeChef organizing an ICPC contest? All ICPC contests I have participated in (NCPC, NWERC, NEERC, whatever is the one in Minsk) were not affiliated with any online judge as far as I could tell.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I have no idea tbh , but some top Indian coders might be knowing that . But they might not reply because they can lose opportunities provided by codechef .

    And trust me they do damage every year . one example

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Last year, the online qualifiers started with server crash. I mean, literally the contest just started, the page reloaded and Boom! Server error!

    And also, there was one controversial question, whose test cases were weak. :(

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      That controversial question didn't have polynomial solution.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        Wow, didn't know that. Who is setting these kind of questions? XD

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4 years ago, # |
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My two cents regarding this thing.

Regarding both of the issues you mentioned, you can see that CodeChef has taken responsibility and strived to make the situation better. The problem set difficulty issue was kind of arisen in 2018, and in 2019 more problems were added in the contest.

The issues regarding the submission queue have been reduced as well. There are significantly more resources put in the icpc round than typical cook off or lunchtime rounds.

You are being reactionary here. CodeChef has really put so much efforts and hard work in making ICPC regionals India a better experience. You may be too young to see examples of non CodeChef hosted icpc regionals, where the issues were really horrible.

Disclaimer: I am no longer associated with CodeChef in any capacity and all opinions are personal.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    But you were associated .And who can forget that you purposefully made long problem statement in ICPC for codechef . PROOF

    Ok , don't you agree it should be hosted on codeforces (Now i know you will not say anything or will just say something which will make no sense) ?

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Come on. That's hardly a criticism. You can do better.

      I don't have any opinion regarding where it should be hosted. If you can gather multiple people who want to get it hosted on Codeforces, you can approach regional directors about it.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        Really , making long problem statement for saving servers isn't bad according to you ?Downvotes on that comment tells if it's criticism or not .

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
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          To be devil's advocate, assume it was my intent. Does that make anything unfair?

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
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            yes , you are checking how fast one can read and not how fast one can solve (In country where English is second language)

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              4 years ago, # ^ |
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              How fast you can read, how fast you can think, how fast you code all of these factors matter.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Where were regionals hosted before CodeChef? What were the issues?

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4 years ago, # |
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My opinion:

  • CodeChef servers have never suffered during ICPC: Today's contest was unfortunate, but again, it was the first (or at best, second) unrated contest in the last 8 months. Moreover, there is a huge difference between ICPC and a monthly rated contest (even for monthly contests, the capacities of the checkers/servers will be increased and an update posted soon)

  • The balance in the contest was horrendous last to last year — it was addressed last year. Moreover, my main motivation to work with CodeChef was to organise a well-prepared and a balanced ICPC contest :) [My contests, both those I have set or have been an admin of, have been decently balanced, at least we can agree on that?]

I'm not trying to compete against Codeforces though — frankly, I believe it is superior right now because of its ease of use.

All I can say is, the issues you have mentioned should not be a worry for when ICPC will be held :D

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    CodeChef servers have never suffered during ICPC

    It never gave 10-20 minutes queue but yes it did stopped for 2-3 minutes during starting .It matters for easy problem .

    Last year there issues with some problems , i don't remember correctly . Go and please read about them .

    I'm not trying to compete against Codeforces though — frankly, I believe it is superior right now because of its ease of use.

    Expected since you are paid for being admin .

    Can some who is downvoting tell where i am wrong ? He is paid for that and thus he will speak for codechef no matter what .

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Yes, last year — one of the problems SUMOR had a wrong solution, which is obviously bad. I was a participant myself lol, so I know how it feels.

      All I can say is, it is not either of the issues you mentioned — and most of all, it is my aim to prevent anything similar happening again.

      PS: I meant Codeforces is superior, not CodeChef :)

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        I have enable my blog history . Please read i have written : "always had an issue with ICPC online" .I didn't listed all issues because they have many faults .

        All the best for your aim . But what problem is on it happening on codeforces ? Codeforces can hold 5 hours icpc contest with lot of problems and there will no issues for sure .

        On codechef multiple cheater become 6 star and never get penalty until public exposes them . How can someone trust such website ?

        PS :I hate codechef and I love codeforces .

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
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          CodeChef punishes cheaters (rating decrement/bans) and you can report the cheaters

          But most of all, I don't see how any of that is relevant to ICPC Online Round — if someone wants to or already cheats on CodeChef, they also probably do on Codeforces.

          You cannot ban anyone from participating in ICPC based on their behaviour on other contests anyway?

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
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            Also a serious thing i want to say : I have heard that you never reply to messages of people even though they are asking for genuine help .

            Whereas here on codeforces most of red coders do reply . Even some LGM's reply.

            Previously you used to speak against codechef but after becoming admin you have changed suddenly .

            So sad to see how people change.

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              4 years ago, # ^ |
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              Regarding holding of contest on CodeChef vs Codeforces, that decision is from the RCDs as far as I am aware — I would be just as excited if it were held on Codeforces.

              As for responding to people asking for help: I'm sorry. I get a lot of messages, but I have answered most of the general queries that I get already on Quora for the same reason.

              It is hard to reply to all messages, although I do try to reply to genuine doubts and queries where my help is specifically required (maybe problemsetting, or something particular to me, instead of how to improve in CP)

              I will try to respond to people more

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                4 years ago, # ^ |
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                Be chilled Ashishgup, I think I don't need to say that but I will, no one is obliged to reply to anyone.. So if someone doesn't then we should be more tolerant and try finding answers on our own

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4 years ago, # |
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I generally like joking about Codechef being terrible (which unfortunately is no longer the case when it comes to the problem quality), but is there any organization in India that can organize ICPC besides Codechef?

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Maybe IARCS .

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Reading their site, they use CodeChef as a platform for INOI anyway. I don't think there is any other site (in India) that can handle the volume of participants that participate in ICPC from India. I don't like using Codechef much, but it is the best there is right now.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    To be fair, I was pleasantly surprised with the lack of issues in the 4 regional contests held by Codechef last year (I attended 2 of them and solved the problems in the other 2 either live or in the replay, and talked to my friends who went to the other 2). Problem quality was high, there were no server issues or queue and so on.

    The only issue I could find is of someone from the Codechef team sometimes disturbing our team mid-contest due to some reasons:

    1. We solved a problem in one of the regionals in the first hour with an unintended solution to one of the problems. They came to us to let us know that they were trying to verify "correctness" of our solution after we had already gotten AC, and we may receive WA later. They later told us (in the third hour) that our solution is provably correct so it is good, but IMO this was very unprofessional and such things should be thought of before regionals (moreover, we won that regional, so it made a big difference in standings). We already knew the actual complete solution, we kind of used a "shortcut" that reduced the code to a clean 50 lines from 120 lines and bad case handling, which we tried to "prove by AC"; so we had to actively decide whether to code the complete solution, or to wait for the codechef team to tell us if we get AC or not.

    2. They asked us to pose for a photograph when we were leading in the last hour of the contest when we were typing the solution to a question. If we had missed an AC by 30 seconds, I would be very pissed :)

    In last year's online round, we found no major server load issues. There was an issue with one problem, where the intended solution was an incorrect greedy (Our team just submitted this incorrect greedy immediately and got AC, so we got lucky and didn't spend much time). So I can understand why the solution seemed natural, but I know many of the new admins of Codechef this year and I'm fairly confident they will not add a problem to the set if they can't 100% prove correctness of a solution :)

    All-in-all, I know previously ICPC in India was a mess, but I believe Codechef is trending in the right direction, and I rather trust the new admins to ensure that problem quality remains high.

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4 years ago, # |
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This can also be seen in another way. Lunchtime and Cookoffs generally have a participation of 4-5k. This time 8-9k people joined. Maybe that affected the server. Also the contest was ruined because of one particular problem that had a fairly huge test case

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4 years ago, # |
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I think that responsibility should be given to codeforces or atcoder .

Please don't disrupt CF or AtCoder with your Indian bullshit.

Indians coming to downvote me. LMAO

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Your handle name suits you really well.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      F*ck off to Codechef. Downvote this,idgaf to all Indian nationalists and downvotes.Of course most of here are Indians and I will get downvotes,no matter what.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        codechef isn't that bad anymore