I have an idea how to make shortest mode more interesting. For now there is no way to win a game using C++ or Java. Win depends on what language you code in. I think it would be better if all players had to code in same language. Even if you don’t know language you gonna need to use, in most cases 15 minutes is enough to find any necessary information in the Internet, moreover it’ll force you to learn new languages!
Let’s say before start of a game players vote and language is randomly chosen from those player voted on. For example if there was 4 people in room and 1 of them voted for Javascript and 3 other voted for Python there is 25% chance of choosing Javascript and 75% chance of choosing Python. I would love to have an opportunity to compete in this mode in language such as C++
Yep, always losing with Java with 80-90 chars against Python 7-10 chars.
Anyway, making people code in language they didn’t choose is not fair - they simply could not know syntax.
I think there should be some kind of “shortness coeffient” for each language which show cost of each character of code. Like each character in Java costs about 0.6 while Python character costs 1.1 for example.
In the other hand it will take ages of experiments to find fair balance for chars weights.
Or at least the characters which will be ignored by the compiler will not count as a character. Honestly I hate it when some of the submitted code is just all in one line and if you don’t know the language it is very hard to understand what the code does. Even if you know the language it could still be hard to read.
If characters which will be ignored by the compiler for example spaces and tabulators then there is a better chance to “win” even if you not using Bash or Phython.
“Shortest code” mode encourages to write less maintainable code (unless you and your team are pythonistas that can dig in any mess). I hate it when public CoC casually strikes me by surprise with another “Shortest code” round when I didn’t ask for it. At least, it should have said that following clash will be “Shortest code” mode and I would simply sign off to wait for another round. But hell no… let’s play who’s got the shortest pythonista code on the Earth whether you were prepared for it or not, of course!
You can be competitive in shortest with one of the following:
Python, JS, Ruby, Perl, PHP.
So you can keep your “main” language for fastest and reverse and for shortest, learn one of these 5 languages.
Learning a language doesn’t hurt, you might even find it usefull later on.
And as for golf being bad practice etc, everyone’s aware of that, people don’t golf on real projects.
It’s just a fun way to learn a language, and a motivation to read the doc carefully and discover usefull features.
Can we just get rid of Shortest Mode overall? I am so sick of Shortest Mode now
Clash of Code should be a test of coding speed, not how many weird syntax tricks you know. It’s literally connected to the Coding Speed certification. CODING SPEED should be how FAST you code, not how CONCISE you code. There’s literally a section on CodinGame already called Code Golf. Why need to incorporate it in a totally different category???
This just happened recently, and that broke me down hard: (Note: 1st place is not @AlkhilJohn , CodinGame’s bot, but is someone else who turned some of the lowercase “L”s into uppercase “i”s)
I used to feel the same. Then I just got used to it. Still, if I could vote Shortest mode out, I would. I still get surprised when I win using JavaScript against Python. But it’s basically impossible to win against Ruby. Ruby was made for shortest mode.
I like to think that Shortest mode exists so that getting Fastest or Reverse mode is more fun. It’s like dodging a bullet .
You wouldn’t believe my shock when I happened upon this screenshot. Shame it wasn’t a puzzle I was capable of.
As for shortest mode, yeah sometimes it sucks, but 90% of the most valuable information I have learned in my month of coding has been from shortest mode, and I like the fact that it allows us to take time with the code, whereas fast and reverse are all about rushing to get an output.
To quickly touch on the other points you made: speed is still a major factor in shortest, assuming two people know the shortest method or use the same method; code golf has barely any puzzles, especially if you’re limited to easy and medium; clash of code would be pretty repetitive without shortest, it’s a nice filler. I liked the suggestion earlier in this thread to give each language a specific character byte value, anything else is probably a net loss to the CoC community.
At least, it should have said that following clash will be “Shortest code” mode and I would simply sign off to wait for another round. But hell no… let’s play who’s got the shortest pythonista code on the Earth whether you were prepared for it or not, of course! 
.