Re:Why I hate programming competitions
by philh on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @07:32PM
(#771697)
There is another model of programming competition, which I'm a fan of: "Write a program [in domain X]. You have until T. Begin."
The time limit doesn't encourage good code, but without it there would probably be no code at all. ("I don't have time to take up another project" vs. "I can spare a weekend to work on this".) And it's not entirely negative: premature optimisation is discouraged. The open-endedness emphasises high-level design over algorithmic details.
The national novel writing month (not a competition, but the same format) guys have a follow-up, national novel editing month. I want to try something similar for programming competitions. You write something quickly, and it gets judged as an alpha. Then you get more time to clean up, add polish, maybe some new features, and it gets judged as a v1.0 final. Maybe this will encourage the right mix of getting things done and doing them well.
The time limit doesn't encourage good code, but without it there would probably be no code at all. ("I don't have time to take up another project" vs. "I can spare a weekend to work on this".) And it's not entirely negative: premature optimisation is discouraged. The open-endedness emphasises high-level design over algorithmic details.
The national novel writing month (not a competition, but the same format) guys have a follow-up, national novel editing month. I want to try something similar for programming competitions. You write something quickly, and it gets judged as an alpha. Then you get more time to clean up, add polish, maybe some new features, and it gets judged as a v1.0 final. Maybe this will encourage the right mix of getting things done and doing them well.