Overview

The last CodeJam creates a big enough motivation for me to join despite the awkward timezone.

GL HF!

Final Thought after participating

This has been a fun one 😎

• Have the most fun attempting problem 2 Illumination Optimisation
• Running short on time as joining an hour late.
  • Still, with this experience learnt how to analyse a problem better
  • better equiped with common coding patterns to solve problem faster
• Randomly view a few people that got 100% and noticed that they are all using C++
  • C++ does have an advantage in precise memory management and more performant.
  • However I wonder
    • If this happens partially due to people with C++ skills usually are better with algorithm
    • If I will be able to do better if I chose C++ instead of Python.
      • I doubt I will do better unless I invest significant amount of time practicing.
      • Python has a lot of nice shorthand and even though I am familar with C++ I don't have any experience of using it to solve problem quickly in a time-boxed manner.
• ==Learnings==
  • [[]] * 5 and [[] for _ in range(5)] defers in that the first approach results in a nested list where all the inner list references the SAME list.
  • Practise and preparation really helps a lot in time-boxed coding challenge.
    • Despite only prepare a rough template that helps with getting inputs into data structures, that already helps speed up significantly.
    • Only after a round of competition, my template is already much better that before I started.
    • Will look for other coding competition to join so that my templates don't go to waste! 🤘

Motivation

• Aside from the rarity of this will be the final round, the main purpose of joining are to improve my programming skills and add experiences in my portfolio.
• In my opinion, a great competitor in coding competition such as CodeJam will not gurantee a great programmer.
  • The main reason being a great programmer must also write clean code and able to communicate well among other things.
  • However, being a great competitor will certainly means a better problem solving ability and better in using algorithm. This is certainly an critical part of being a good programmer.

Useful Details for 2023 Farewell Round

• All info are from the FAQ and Rules page.
• Contrast to previous years, there will not be next round. This farewell round is the only round.
• There are 4 rounds within the Farewell round
  • All rounds starts and ends at the same time.
  • There is no limit on how many round one person can join.
  • No prize for any rounds this time.
• Difficulty of each round
  • Round A is appropriate for beginners.
  • Round B is about the level of a Kick Start round or a Code Jam Round 1.
  • Round C is harder than a Code Jam Round 2 but easier than a Code Jam Round 3.
  • Round D is meant for experienced competitors. It is between a Code Jam Round 3 and Finals difficulty.
• Some problem might only be possible to solve by using C++ due to performance reason.

CodeJam Platform Specifications

• https://codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com/codejam/faq#platform
• 64-bit version of Debian 10.9 (buster)
  • Install package using apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends <package>
• Linux Kernel
  • Linux version 4.19.0-16-cloud-amd64
  • package: linux-image-cloud-amd64
• Stack size limit
  • 64 MB per language, defined by ulimit -s 65536
  • JVM-based languages are passed the -Xss64m flag during execution.
• Languages Specific specs
  • C++
    • gcc 8.3.0 (packages: gcc, g++)
    • g++ Solution.cc -std=c++17 -pthread -O2 -o Solution
    • ./Solution
  • Python 3:
    • 3.7.3 (package: python3.7)
      • numpy 1.19.3 (pip install numpy)
      • scipy 1.5.3 (pip install scipy)
    • python3 Solution.py

Interactive Problem

• In an interactive problem, our judging system and your code run at the same time.
• When you send output to your output stream, the judge reads that output and then responds by sending input to your input stream.
  • Then your code reads that input, and determines what output to send next, and so on. Each test set proceeds in this way.
  • Generally, the judge tells your code when a test set has been solved, or when you have failed the test set.
• Must flush your output buffer every time output data to the judge
  • Else the judge might end up waiting forever for output that never comes
  • Refer to the templates for cpp and python respectively for sample to flush output
• Others
  • stderr is ignored but need to take care to not overflow it to not affect memory limit
  • Should not send any additional output after processing all test cases. Will result in 'Wrong Answer' judgement if do otherwise.
  • To test solution locally, use CodeJam interactive_runner.py script in conjunction with the judge.
    • The judge will be included at the bottom of an interactive problem statement.