Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by IanCal on Saturday May 16, 2026 @08:31AM (#48159631)

Fizzbuzz is such an incredibly simple problem if you can’t do it I struggle to see how you’d be able to complete any task that requires very basic reasoning and very basic coding knowledge. And if an AI system can do those parts, what am I getting for spending tens of thousands of pounds per year by hiring a person who can’t? Wouldn’t I just tag codex on the tickets?

I’m not talking about gotcha level stuff here where the first time it didn’t compile because of a bracket or anything, or even first time wrong. They couldn’t do Fizzbuzz in a language of their choice, at all.

Those that could were always annoyed at having to do such things because how could someone coming for a contract position not be able to do this? Without seeing what a filter it really was.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by eudamoniac on Saturday May 16, 2026 @12:16PM (#48161499)

I feel the same way about inverting a binary tree, but a lot of people act like it's an arduous request. I am guessing it's because they've never read the description of what inverting a binary tree is, but maybe people are just that bad at recursion.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by krapht on Saturday May 16, 2026 @05:34PM (#48164020)

You can go your entire career without recursing, or using a tree data structure in its raw form (i.e. you only use it as part of a library)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by marshray on Saturday May 16, 2026 @06:58PM (#48164522)

Right. For the first many decades of computing, recursion was just always the wrong answer for a production software system. (Feel free to provide a counter-example, but please begin with an explanation of how the size of a call stack frame is determined and how exceeding the base allocation is handled on this platform).

So what tree-traversal/quicksort problems tend to measure is how long it's been since you last did CS class homework problems.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by saagarjha on Sunday May 17, 2026 @08:59AM (#48168551)

There's no need to put your data on the call stack.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by marshray on Monday May 18, 2026 @02:11PM (#48183285)

Great. Please explain how the size of a call stack frame is determined and how exceeding the base allocation is handled on the particular platform you're proposing to recurse upon.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by saagarjha on Monday May 18, 2026 @06:11PM (#48186467)

I feel like you have not responded to my comment.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format by ptrl600 on Sunday May 17, 2026 @04:11AM (#48166979)

Yeah, you read it and expect the inversion to be inside-out or upside-down, defined in some hopelessly arcane way.

[ Parent | on HN ]