Are Code Golf Rankings re-run on language or validation test updates?

Platform Evolution
#1

Hey there,
I’ve spent quite some time with code golfing now, especially with Javascript (and I learnt SO much stuff!).

Given that I am still 40 chars away from the top solution for Power of Thor, I was wondering if code golfing solutions are ever re-evaluated once a language update happens or if validation tests change.

The question came up because I read that the old “system()” trick for JS doesn’t work anymore since SpiderMonkey was replaced with NodeJS V8 (a while ago…). So do old solutions using this trick still count? Ignoring the discussion whether it’s cool to use Bash in a JS solution, I’ld consider this case unfair because they had tools at hand that cannot be used any longer (“child_process.exec()” is much longer…).

Similarily, I think I read that a missing validation test was added for Thor for going North (couldn’t find the post anymore, though so I might be wrong). Any solutions that pruned away this path in the past would have an unfair advantage, too…

I am aware that re-running potentially thousands of solutions again is resource intense. Also, I am not sure how Codingame should rank solutions that now aren’t passing 100% anymore - and users might get confused why their solution was ranked down (or up :)). For e.g. Python 2 vs 3, print ‘abc’ vs print(‘abc’) would break a lot of solutions, too I guess (other language’s updates might be even less compatible?).

But I think it would be more interesting to see solutions/rankings for the current state of available language versions and validation tests than to keep solutions that aren’t up to date anymore.

What do you think?

1 Like
#2

Nice timing, everything but Thor was rerun last week. I would guess the delay on Thor is to update the validators with some Wests, but don’t know for sure.

1 Like
#3

I observed recent reruns on Don’t Panic and Temperatures but nothing special for Thor and Chuck Norris, I don’t know if they will be rerun or not.

But there was a full rerun on Thor about one year ago and it was after the JS update so you can be sure that the current solutions are still reachable in JS and most languages.
My JS solution is still reachable, at least.
The solutions that would fail for Thor are mostly those calling ruby from another language.

Same for Chuck Norris but I don’t think anyone in the top calls ruby, usually it’s perl or sed, so there should not be any significant change for Chuck Norris.

#4

Chuck Norris was rerun as well, I had to patch up 5 Ruby calls that died.

#5

Wow, the answers came fast :blush: . Thanks for the information! And yes, good timing :wink:

#6

[CG]Thibaud launches a re-run of a golf puzzle when he decides it has to be re-runned. It’s not automatic.

After many language updates, many solutions were broken.