Codeforces: Surprise Language Round # 5
I continue to write unusual rounds for Codeforces: let me introduce you to Surprise Language Round # 5 , which will be held on February 22 at 7:00 pm Moscow time .
This competition continues the series of Unknown Language Rounds, in which participants are invited to perform simple tasks in a single programming language that becomes known a few minutes before the start of the round. This is the beauty of such rounds: one can focus not on the invention of algorithms, as usual, but on a new, unheard of language. In any case, such is the idea of the authors; we do not exclude that someone could have seen the language of the round earlier or even wrote something on it, but for most participants the language should be a surprise. As you can see, Brainfuck disappears :-)
The last round of this type, which I also conducted, forced people to immerse themselves in Befunge — a fairly well-known esoteric language. Ten tasks covered a fairly wide range of complexity, starting with the “comforting task” of calculating hexagonal numbers (numbers of the form N * (2 * N-1)):
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Among other things, the participants laid out the numbers by factors, checked the balance of the string of brackets and sorted the array - tasks, simple and even trivial in any normal language, but requiring remarkable cunning, if the language is esoteric. However, this did not stop the participants: five of them solved all ten problems, and at least one problem was solved by 278 people - a record for this type of competition! Analysis of tasks from the Befunge-round can be found here .
Of course, the round # 5 will not look like the previous one (otherwise the idea of the surprise competition is lost), but I hope that it will be no less interesting.
This competition continues the series of Unknown Language Rounds, in which participants are invited to perform simple tasks in a single programming language that becomes known a few minutes before the start of the round. This is the beauty of such rounds: one can focus not on the invention of algorithms, as usual, but on a new, unheard of language. In any case, such is the idea of the authors; we do not exclude that someone could have seen the language of the round earlier or even wrote something on it, but for most participants the language should be a surprise. As you can see, Brainfuck disappears :-)
The last round of this type, which I also conducted, forced people to immerse themselves in Befunge — a fairly well-known esoteric language. Ten tasks covered a fairly wide range of complexity, starting with the “comforting task” of calculating hexagonal numbers (numbers of the form N * (2 * N-1)):
')
&:2*1-*.@Among other things, the participants laid out the numbers by factors, checked the balance of the string of brackets and sorted the array - tasks, simple and even trivial in any normal language, but requiring remarkable cunning, if the language is esoteric. However, this did not stop the participants: five of them solved all ten problems, and at least one problem was solved by 278 people - a record for this type of competition! Analysis of tasks from the Befunge-round can be found here .
Of course, the round # 5 will not look like the previous one (otherwise the idea of the surprise competition is lost), but I hope that it will be no less interesting.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/138610/
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