It’s a question for the admins, but i’d like to have a feedback from the codechef community as well.
Would you like to be able to see the test cases files and their expected outputs, only for contests, after the contest is finished ? For example, this material could be provided by a link on each contest problem page, or by downloadable content on the wiki editorials. I think it would be a great way to understand why a particuliar solution was rejected, for example.
This seems to be a never-ending discussion… Several posts regarding this subject were put up on discussion boards before and there were several opinions about this…
My opinion is that the test case files should remain hidden… This is because people can learn A LOT more from reading editorials and seeing other people’s code instead of staring at two different output files and to their own bugged code.
Note that you can have WA for mainly two reasons here:
a) Overflow;
b) Your logic is incorrect;
On either case having the test case files can prove useful, especially, because all main tricks and subtleties of the problem had already been discussed in detail, on the editorial… Comparing your code vs. tester/setter’s code is a much more efficient way to learn that being provided with the test case files…
Especially because problems can have sometimes 10/15 files, if you think that each file as 100.000 test cases (for example) and your program fails on the last case of the last file, then what good are the test case files to you?
Please note, that all of this as already been discussed here and you can find more opinions on this topic.
For a lot of people like me, on seeing WA people get curious to know which test cases they have missed. Keeping the test cases hidden forever doesn’t give a chance to figure out the mistake in one’s own code. Merely keeping the setter’s and tester’s solution, makes me feel like I should only think the way setter/tester thinks!
It would be great !! really its frustating sometimes, when we are debugging like hell, and after getting an AC by using the correct approach,we don’t know, why my previous approach failed !.
I don’t think it is a very good idea to do so because in real life you don’t get to see test cases before you code. Seeing the test cases before coding a solution is something you don’t want to do, the reason being when you do that what you are actually doing is coming up with a solution for the test cases you have seen and you don’t put the effort that would help you grow in your competitive programming career.
Just an honest opinion! It may vary person to person!
Mate, I don’t think this is at all a good idea. Revealing test cases would take out all the fun of coding. I myself recently spent nearly 30 incorrect submissions before getting a beautiful AC!!. If there ever is an option of revealing test cases, No one would bother more than 5 tries for any problem in practice section (Most people I’m talking about).
Though i would like that in case a problem has multiple approaches, editorials should explain as many as possible without adding much to the workload of Editorialist. Possiblly adding links to solutions from contest submissions.
@cyberax I like your thinking but revealing test cases is not good for beginners (I’m totally agree with @taran_1407 ). I have an idea, like CodeChef shows test cases only when someone gets 10-20 WA on the same question. By doing this it will help to built aptitude of solving problems and learn new things.
haha, ‘give them power, and they shall misuse it’. There might be cases that people intentionally submit 20 times to get the test cases… this will increase server load for no reason!
I think there should be a provision of seeing the answer in exchange of some tokens that they will have to earn like karma(codechef.discuss) and hackos(hackerrank)
Thx.