Hey, I have a suggestion to add a new mode to Clash of Code.
Efficiency mode. What do I mean by saying efficiency?
I mean that the winner in the clash will be the one that his program
has the shortest run time and solve the most test cases (like the others mode).
Efficiency mode will make people think about the run time of the program more
and will improve their awareness to the run time of the programs they write in general.
I also think that people will learn more about the topic (time complexity, run time…).
I afraid that it will end up being like the Shortest mode (just several languages
wins, so you have to know one of those languages to win), I don’t know but I guess that in some languages it will be also very hard to win because their run time in general (commands, functions…)
take longer than other languages. I don’t know if this is true but it makes sense it does.
I think you should consider it just because of making coders more aware to their programs run time,
I really think that this is very important and very useful.
The idea is interesting but as you said, it would require the use of C/C++/Java.
Not sure that CoC users would all be happy with that (~90% use only Python).
Also, CoC are supposed to last ~5 min, so it would be hard to design interesting complexity problems solvable in 5 min.
So not a bad idea but not really suitable for CoC, more for classic puzzles.
There are already a few puzzles where time complexity matter but I agree that there could be more.
Also, if you want competitions based on efficiency, there are a few problems like that in the optimisation section, “shifting numbers” for example.
I agree with you about that it would require the use of specific languages.
I really think this a problem of just few languages can win a mode need to be fixed.
If somebody from CG will fix this sometime than maybe they can add my idea also (efficiency mode).
“Also, CoC are supposed to last ~5 min, so it would be hard to design interesting complexity problems solvable in 5 min.” - I don’t think so. Just think about a simple
problems: Finding prime, comparing strings, find the N-th Number in sequence
and more. All of them can be solved in 5 or less minutes, the question is how good they are in the run time point of view, and that what makes the question more interesting.
I forget to mention that if two players have the same run time and solve the same number
of test cases, than the first of them will be the fastest one.
