I am into competitive programming recently. Off many of the coding websites, Codechef has one of the best user-interface and great classification of different level problems.
It Would be even better if codechef provides test-cases for which the code fails in practice problems section. This Would:
Help in correcting or debugging code ourselves. It also prevents the users to look up for others’
code. Ofcourse that helps but it eradicates the need to think on our own. Providing the test cases in practice problems also give the user an idea of what type of test cases are provided in a contest and it significantly improves coding skills.
Yes, its a great idea, Everyone supports this, but still there is a lot of discussion going on!..
Because it might spoil abilities to creat our own test cases and think of boundary conditions…
But yet it will be frustrating not knowing where it fails even if you are 100% sure.
Then providing test cases will be helpful not only to understand the problem completely but also to know how a tester/author puts the intelligent test case.
I also believed the same as what you said when I was influenced by practising on different sites but then it didn’t really develop my ability to come up with corner cases.And I can really sense the way codechef contests had influenced my thinking ability and not to mention the brainstorming sessions.Especially the long contests,they are a treat.
Yes, Like Codeforces, solution of problems on Codechef should also contain the whole set of test cases (definitely after the completion of contests ) so that we can trace our faults and likewise debug it. but there is a major concern for not developing our own corner cases (as @lordshiva1996 says)…it might spoil our thinking abilities.
But yet it will be good to know test cases (when you are 100% sure that you are correct).
We will reduce our thinking to a extent as we will easily know for what all test-cases our program fails so it not appropriate that it shows for what all test-cases the respective programs of users fails!Programming is to widen our thinking but if they provide testcase thn we are contradicting the meaning our programming!thn its “Better not to code”!Codechef is doing right by showing only few test-case!Keep up the GOOD WORK CODECHEF COMMUNITY!!